How to estimate product test hours for new relea

Interview Questions

How to estimate product test hours for new releases?

Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

How to estimate product test hours for new releases?

Answer1:
Your main task is to convince your company of the
- value of structured testing and the benefits it brings to the end product
- the risks of not testing properly (high maintenance, lots of bugs found in production (and these generally found by your customers!), loss of market reputation ("another crap product from xyz company).
Another approach might be to consider starting your test processes earlier (i am guessing from your message that you are following some kind of waterfall method) - its a sort of 'design a little, build a little, test a little, design a little ...' approach.

Answer2:
Tell the folks making decisions to read user feedback. No time for testing = angry users who want their money back or worse angry clients who suddenly hire a team of lawyers.
Warned all the stakeholders early on and then sent user feedback emails up the chain. Users can be brutal and they tell the truth! Comments like YOU SUCK!!
It may also convince them to get more support people instead of increasing testing.

Answer3:
The ratios:
3/1 Developers to QA (industry)
3/2 Developers to QA (Microsoft)
There is also a really good article called "A Better Bug Trap" published by The Economist in 2004, which is pretty telling: according to NIST 80% of a software project belongs to testing and debugging.
There is also the classic book called "Mythical Man Month". There are a couple of pertinent passages there:
1) Back when the book was written, the percentage quoted by NIST was 50%, which means that software development has become less efficient over the last 20 years or so.
2) There is a 30% that a change in any line of code will break something down stream.
3) There is another article published by McKinsey Quarterly called "What high tech can learn from slow-growth industries".

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