Software test effort estimation

Abstract

Software Testing is an important process of software development that is performed to support and enhance reliability and quality of the software. It consist of estimating testing effort, selecting suitable test team, designing test cases, executing the software with those test cases and examining the results produced by those executions. Studies indicate that more than fifty percent of the cost of software development is devoted to testing, with the percentage for testing critical software being even higher. Unless we can predict the testing effort and find efficient ways to perform effective testing, the percentage of development costs devoted to testing will increase significantly coupled with mismatch in project costing and development schedule. In order to estimate the testing effort, this paper makes an attempt to establish Cognitive Information Complexity Measure (CICM) as an appropriate estimation tool.