A COSMIC function points based test effort estimation model for mobile applications

Abstract

With the substantial proliferation in demand for applications running on mobile devices, developers and testers are foreseen to release applications with high caliber, on time and inside budget. Mobile application testing is imperative and perilous activity in the application development lifecycle, which confirms quality and unswervingly impacts the development effort and affluence of the application. The estimation of effort for testing of apps is a key figure that helps test managers in making approximate accurate decisions for coordinating testing resources. In this study, a regression model is presented to predict test effort for mobile applications considering COSMIC Function Size Measurement (FSM), mobile app characteristics/factors and test factors. The major benefit of this model is that it tends to be utilized at the beginning of mobile app testing life cycle, and thus can assist testers to effectively lead early effort estimation. The model presented is further validated and evaluated for their effectiveness by using a k-fold cross-validation method. MRE, MMRE, MdMRE, PRED (0.25) and PRED (0.50) indices are used for measuring the accuracy of the model and findings suggest that the proposed model gives a good prediction and can be exercised in the mobile software industry for predicting test effort.