Testing activities in SDLC can be divided mainly into two major parts - preparation of testing artifacts & executing the test cases based on these artifacts. The estimation of testing effort should include the estimated effort for preparing requirement analysis, preparation of feature analysis document, creation of test cases, testing setup preparation, test case execution and preparation of test reports. The testing artifacts preparation activity includes review & approval cycle which involves effort from multiple reviewers.

These main activities of testing lifecycle are independent of testing phase, hence may be applicable to all phases. The scope of the testing phase will decide the planned effort for each phase. The test cases for the required test phases need to be estimated. This should include evaluation for new feature as well regression. The test cases can be given a complexity figure which will also play a role in calculating the productivity. The very complex scenarios, which may include testing related to the system performance, can be assigned fixed effort instead of productivity based effort.

After considering the testing activities, productivity for each of the testing phase can be calculated; this may vary from phase to phase. The planned number of test cases & the calculated productivity will be used for estimating the effort for the testing activities. For regression test cases, automation, if applicable, will also play a role while calculating the final effort.

The planned effort, thus, can be denoted as -
ⁿ ∑P₁*N₁,
i=1
where "i" denotes different testing phases, "P" represents productivity for each testing phase & "N" are the number of test cases estimated for the phase.

Ajay Garg - B.E (Electronics & Communication) from Pondicherry Engineering College in 1989 & MBA (International Business) from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi in 2006. Has twenty years of experience in telecom testing ranging from PSTN switches to Softswitch & now in GSM BTS. His past associations were with Punjab Communications, Fujitsu India Telecom Limited, C-DOT & currently working with Aricent Technologies as Director - Engineering

Pankaj Vashisht - B.Tech (Electronics & Communication) from REC (NIT) Hamirpur in 1995. Has over thirteen years of experience in Telecom & Datacom testing which includes Packet Switches & GSM BTS testing. He is associated with Aricent Technologies as Senior Technical Lead.