Estimations in QA
Last modified on Tue 10 Oct 2023

What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months - Fred Brooks

Introduction

As per Wikipedia: "Estimation (or estimating) is the process of finding an estimate or approximation, which is a value that is usable for some process even if input data may be incomplete, uncertain or unstable."

The estimation can be valuable and very useful when answering two questions that a client or project member can have:

  1. How long will it take this to be tested?
  2. How much will it cost?

What QA can estimate?

The most common things a member of the QA team can estimate are:

These things are key factors and depend on each other to deliver quality software that will be useful and can be considered a benefit for users around the world.

Some authors, in theory, are adding one additional component that QA can estimate: the cost. But taking into consideration that we in Infinum have excellent managers, Leads, and Business Development teams, we will leave that part to them :).

How to estimate?

It is never easy to provide an estimation. With experience, you can learn how to deal with it and provide more accurate estimation, but the moment when providing estimates can be very stressful. This section is meant to guide you through the whole process of estimation and how to make it easy for you and your team.

Tips & Tricks for better and improved estimation

Estimating is not an easy thing to do. Especially if you are dealing with some not-that-easy people and clients. However, the following tips should help you when it's your turn to provide an estimation:

Popular estimation techniques and methods

When it comes to methods and techniques that can be useful in the process of estimation, there are quite a large number of them. For some of them, some authors published books. However, in this section, we will mention and explain some of the most popular estimation techniques:

If you want to learn more about Agile estimation and planning, you can read here or read the book Agile Estimation and Planning by Mike Cohn.

NOTE: At Infinum, as a QA team, we are not strictly using 1 or 2 techniques. The basic principle of estimation is left to the tester's experience, knowledge, and creativity, as well as the project structure as part of the Agile methodology.