My Interactions with Customers – Pricing based on the consumption of Test Units

Posted by Ananda Rao Ladi in

 Testing

Feb 22, 2012 | Total views: 146

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Ananda Rao Ladi
Sr.VP and the Head of the Testing Business Unit
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Can all testing activities be abstracted into “people-agnostic” units?
Based on this, can the effort be estimated based on the time taken per unit?
Subsequently, can the commercial model be based on the money to be charged per test unit consumed?
In other words, can testing ever become a utility like electricity or water?
This was the topic of a recent thought provoking discussion with one of our prestigious customers from Europe.

We discussed about converting the testing activities into units, which include Strategy, Planning, Design, Development, Execution, Reporting, Automation, Performance testing and many more. We realized the need for a standard definition of these activities. Is it possible to standardize these at all? The biggest ticket item is the Test Case. Is it really so difficult because of which, there is no standard definition of a Test Case?

It is also linked to how the size or the complexity of a system is defined. There is some progress on standardizing this, but we have a long way to go.

Another important reason for the absence of standardization is the lack of discipline in the IT world. The prescribed guidelines are seldom adhered to.

Many of us have been able to successfully abstract the testing activities for a specific scenario. Making this applicable for all the scenarios is not going to be possible in the near future. If the Testing activities can be standardized based on a well-defined System under Test and the objective of testing, the world will be a much better place!

Please do share your thoughts and experiences about implementing it in your engagements.