factors influencing the test effort so in any of the test project or testing life cycle when you are estimating the effort that is required to finish the amount of work there are certain factors to be considered when you are doing those estimations and in this tutorial we are going to discuss what all those factors are and how those factors are going to influence the amount of effort that you estimate for doing the similar sort of work so in certain cases that effort might be less because there are certain factors that because of those factors that effort will be reduced but there might be in some other conditions there are certain factors which will increase that particular effort so let's see what all factors are there to be considered when you're doing the test estimation effort now the first um thing that you need to consider or what factors in fluent influence the test effort uh there are certain categories of these factors so there are there is product category characteristics development process characteristics people characteristics and the test results so these are some of the characteristics that influence your test effort now let's see what all these characteristics are and what all things need to be considered when you're doing the test effort estimation now the first one is product characteristics now how does product characteristics uh influence the test effort so for example you are testing any application so any risks associated with the project product if you're testing an application which is related to the medical industry and is is a life critical uh application uh and is supported and it's sort of software that needs to be deployed in icus so that's a life critical application so it is highly risk associated there is high risk associated with that particular software and because of that when if it is a high risk then you you are going to obviously put a lot of effort testing each and every possible combination and characteristics of that particular software as compared to any other say for example any other e-commerce application that you are testing which is not life critical it's just an online store to sell certain goods then that's not a live critical application so estimation for an e-commerce application the test effort for the e-commerce application will be different or less as compared to the live critical application which is a medical application to be deployed in the icu similarly the next thing is the quality of the test basis how your test basis is is going to influence the test effort that is required so for example your test basis is pretty well defined you have a good set of requirements very well defined uh requirement then obviously you don't have to go back and forth with the stakeholder with the with the product owner product manager to clarify a lot of details that you are going to test in that case your test effort will be less if your quality of test base is good your test effort will be more if your quality of test basis is not very good um then the next thing is size of product so if um how big this the product is or how complex the product product is or project is that is another criteria or characteristic that will define how much test effort it is going to take next one is product domain complexity so um same like uh the medical software or e-commerce application if a medical software is more complex then it's going to take more time and more test effort as compared to any other application or simple mobile app that you are developing so that will take quite less time so depending on the domain complexity um it is possible that the time to test the application will differ then the requirement for the quality characteristics so how um are you required to do the security reliability and performance testing as well as part of your test estimation that will also define or that will also vary the test effort that is required for that particular application the next thing is the required level of detail for the test documentation that's also very important because the amount of documentation that you are going to produce as part of that test test cycle will define or will also change the test effort that you are going to put so for example your client wants each and every test case documented with all the required test data as well as all the detailed test steps it's obviously going to take a lot of time as compared to some other um client who is just asking for one liner sort of uh test scenarios to be documented and then um you can just execute those and produce them as a test artifact so depending on the level of documentation how complex the documentation and how a big the documentation is required how detailed the documentation is required the test estimation will differ as well then the requirement for the legal and regulatory compliance that's another major important factor which will change the test effort required so if there is any legal requirement or requirement which which which is regulatory so for example most of the banks have the regulatory requirement for any of the project that do that they do for most of the project that they do um so in those sort of regulatory requirements you have to meet certain standards and settle in regulations so those regulatory requirements you can't miss and you have to fulfill those regulatory requirement however if there are no regulatory and legal compliance requirement then the test effort will be bit less so these are some of the product characteristics that you need to keep in mind when doing test estimation and these are the characteristics that will impact your test test effort estimates now let's go uh next and see what are the development process characteristics that impact the test effort now how stable and mature the organization development life cycle is so depending on how well defined process are in the organization that impacts the test effort so if an organization is a new organization without any maturity and process obviously the test effort or will be a lot more because you you don't have any processes you you will be working on the process along with the testing effort that you are doing however if the organization is a mature organization you know how much time usually has been taken in similar sort of complex project then you can come up with the actual numbers for the test estimates or test effort estimates then what is the development model in use so depending on whether you are using the waterfall v model or agile development methodology these test estimates might differ as well the test approach tools test process and time pressure so these are some of the other characteristics of the development process so what approach you are using um what test approach you are using what sort of tools you are using whether you are using just the manual testing or you will be using automation testing uh and you will be using couple of uh other performance testing tool which might expedite your testing effort depending on those tools you will be required less time so that will impact the test effort as well along with that test process and time pressure also impacts the test effort estimate going next so people characteristics so how are the team members killed if all the or most of the members of your team are new team members definitely you are going to spend some time in training those people and coming or uh bringing them up to this speed before they can actually start delivering some value so in those sort of scenarios there will be more test effort however if the team is has been uh having a lot of experience in similar uh approaches and similar sort of domain then you know that they are well trained enough and they can tackle the problem easily then how the experience of the team members is so whether they have been experienced in the similar domain or not or whether they are just sort of new members then the other is team cohesion and leadership so how well the team spirit is and how well the team works together and how is the leadership support for the team that's another factor that uh that basically impacts the testing effort so if the team is having all the skills that are required to required in that particular project if they are experienced they are working well together and having the proper leadership support those sort of teams will require less time to complete that particular project as opposed to the team which doesn't have the particular skills which are required in the project they are not very well experienced and do not have cohesion and leadership support so in those sort of scenarios there will be much more time required to deliver the same testing project the uh the next thing is uh the test results so how so for example in similar sort of um project or the previous project where in the team has been working uh what all number of defects have been found previously what were the severity of the defects found uh or what was the amount of rework required then the time taken to test similar applications these are some of the characteristic characteristics or the test results that are available previously or historical test results from the previous projects considering all those factors from the previous test project might also help you to come up with the test effort and then keeping in mind what all test results or what all defects were found in the similar project what was the severity of those projects all those factors will help you to identify what the complexity of the previous project was what time it took what all defects came and then considering all those factors what might be the effort required in the current project which is sort of similar complexity and similar domain as we have done in the past so these are some of the um characteristics that impact the effort or the test effort estimate required for any testing project thank you