Practical Estimation Lesson

In wring this blog as response to the comment from Raj in one of my earlier post. He's asked me about the estimation techniques I use for testing efforts.

I've never used any standard estimation process such as Function point analysis, COCOMO etc. Testing estimation always is very much tied to the development estimates. So an independent estimation without taking into consideration development schedules always fails. At a very high level, I ask team members and test leads to use work break down structure (WBS) to estimate how much it'd take to complete the task on an optimistic and pessimistic count. I've found WBS method to be effective when testers have performed similar task previously. These estimates are subjective, and that is also fine. Behavioural and emotional factors also comes into picture when it comes to estimation in WBS. It always helps if you meet as a group and ask 'why'/'what-if'/'how' questions to further refine the estimates. Probing questions can be 'why is time taken for testing testing the feature more on Unix than on windows?', 'did you consider the factor in your estimates that feature XXX may be unstable because its based on a libraries our developers had inherited from a team that no longer exist?', 'how did you come up with this estimate?'. Many of these questions are intrusive in nature, some testers may be uncomfortable with this style. However, the team lead/manager should remember the need to perform this within a team meeting context. It requires to be stated very clearly that its the process that is being questioned and not the person .
What I typically do, is to have a 'long-term' estimate for the management when the project is initiated. This is generally a one-time estimate and as a test manager, you'd need to convince the stakeholders that the estimates comes with 'risk'. Identification of risks is important at this stage, and the most important risk is the 'risk the feature not delivered for testing in the schedule time', 'no clarity on what the requirement is' etc.

What I also do is to have internal estimates of individual tasks. These are 'near-term' estimates of individual tasks. These tasks are more granular and gives a foresight of tasks for typically next 3 weeks. Tasks performed by individual team member tasks should be stated to a level not exceeding 2 to 3 days. These estimates are more realistic and have dependencies. For example, these tasks can be very specific something like 'verify defect fixed in last 2 weeks', 'test the fund transfer module for inoperative accounts', 'get the latest build installed on the UNIX box', 'review the latest modifications for the user doc'. For each and every task taken-up by team members, a standard question to be asked is 'how long will it take?'. In my experience, typically for a mid-sized project, on a typically day, you may tend to ask this question over 3 to 4 times. Often so, every one in the team gets used to this question that they have this answer ready. It helps to track the near-term estimates if you are using a spread sheet or similar project tracking tools.

From my experience and the context in which we are working on, the stakeholders are more interested progress of work rather than the estimates. Enough advanced communication with the stakeholders about the progress, issues and risks are more important than the accuracy of the estimates.

With enough experience in the project, you can derive your next long term extimate from your previous near-term estimates. I've heard of "Wideband Delphi" estimation and seems to be a promising technique for estimating testing efforts.

Test Cases as security blanket

There's a raging controversy going on, at least in the Indian software testing community about "test cases centric testing" vs "non test cases centric" testing. Pradeep has posted here at length on this subject, also has the imprints of the controversy all over the web, from forum posts to blogs to yahoo groups.

My take on this is to consider a test case as a security blanket. Wiki defines security blanket as "A security blanket is any familiar object whose presence provides comfort or security to its owner, such as the literal blankets often favoured by small children". It gives the sense of comfort for the person using it. "Person" I mean not just testers running the test script but also developers developing the product, product managers or end customers. Everyone derives comfort from the fact that "test cases have been executed and passed"

Are security blankets necessarily bad? certainly not!. For me as a test manager, it gives me comfort ( and thereby the sense of security) to the fact that the software I'm going to sign-off will not fail when used within the confines of the test scenarios that my team has found to be passing. Does it mean that my test cases are foolproof /security blanket is without holes? Certainly not and its my responsibility as a test manager to make it understand to the stakeholders that the test cases are never foolproof.

To find bugs in a software is the most important responsibility of a test team and a set of predefined execution paths ( aka test cases ) will certainly not find many defects. But the test cases has its rightful and important place as a security blanket within the confines of a software development cycle. During the final phases of the release cycle, several rounds of test cases executions provide the necessary confidence to the stakeholders that the product is ready for release.

Again, I've never seen anyone questioning "what's a test case?" all thoughout the controversy. When I mention a test case in this blogpost, I'd need to make it clear that "I" mean by a "test case". This will be a topic for another blogpost.

Equate test cases to comfort object ; certainly not harmful in anyway and certainly provide the psychological strength. To conclude it all, software development is all about human behavior and interactions!