Software Testing Effort: An Assessment Through Fuzzy Criteria Approach

Abstract

Software Testing is an important process of software development which is performed to support and enhance reliability and quality of the software. It consists of estimating testing effort, selecting suitable test team, designing test cases, executing the software with those test cases and examining the results produced by those executions. Studies indicate that 40-50 percent of the cost of software development is devoted to testing, with the percentage for testing critical software being even higher. This paper makes an attempt to estimate reliable software testing effort using fuzzy logic. The paper deals with the features of the Software Testing Effort (STE) estimation problem by proposing a novel Fuzzy model by integrating COCOMO, fuzzy logic and weighing techniques, Test Effort Drivers (TEDs) into a single platform. In this model triangular membership functions with monotonic constraints have been chosen, which finally achieve good generalization. The proposed model is finally validated with a case study of an Organization. Another feature of the present model is that it allows for continuous rating values and therefore avoids the problem of similar projects having large variances in cost estimations.