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(A) Can you explain on what basis does TPA actually work?

There are three main elements which determine estimate for black box test Size, Test strategy and Productivity.  Using all these three elements we can determine the estimate for black box testing for a given project. So let’s understand all these elements step by step.

Size: - The prime important thing in estimation is definitely the size of the project. Size of a project is mainly defined by number of function points.  But a function point fails or pays least importance to the following factors:-

• Complexity: - Complexity means how many conditions exist in function points identified during project. If more conditions means more test cases that means more testing estimates. For instance below is an application which takes customer name from the end user. If the customer name is greater than 20 characters then application should throw an error. So for this case there will be one test case. But let’s say the end user also puts one more condition that if the user inputs any invalid character then the application should throw an error. Because there is one more extra condition in the project that means the complexity has increased due to the extra condition which also means that we need now two test cases to test, which means increase in test efforts. Below figure signifies the same in a pictorial manner.

Figure: - Complexity

• Interfacing:-How much does one function affect the other part of the system?. So if this function is modified then accordingly the other systems have to be tested as this function has high impact analysis.
• Uniformity: - How reusable is the application?.  It is important to consider how many similar structured functions exist in the system. It is important to consider the extent to which the system allows testing with slight modifications.

Test strategy: - Every project has certain requirements. The importance of all these requirements also affects testing estimates. Any requirement importance is from two perspectives one is the user importance and one the user usage. Depending on these two characteristics a requirement rating can be generated and a strategy can be chalked out accordingly.  Which also means that estimates vary accordingly?.

Productivity: - This is one more important aspect to be considered while estimating black box testing.  Productivity depends on lot of aspects for instance if your project has fresher’s definitely your estimates shoot up, because you will need to train the fresher’s in terms of project and domain knowledge. Productivity has two important aspects environment and productivity figure. Environmental factor defines how much the environment affects a project estimate. Environmental factors contains aspects like tools, test environments, availability if test ware etc. While productivity figure depends on knowledge, how many senior people are there in the team etc?

Below diagram shows the complete pictorial regarding the different elements which constitute TPA analysis as discussed in the previous section.

Figure: - TPA parameters

If you want to buy the project management book mail [email protected]  for more details or call any of our book shops MUMBAI-22078296/97/022-22070989, KOLKATA-22826518/19 HYDERABAD-24756967,24756400,BANGALORE-25587923, 25584641,AHMEDABAD-26421611,BHATINA(PUNJAB)-2237387,CHENNAI-28410796,28550491,DELHI/NEWDELHI-23254990/91,23325760,26415092,24691288.If you want to write to the author directly email at [email protected]
 

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