21. Estimating Testing Time

Partway through an assessment, the senior manager asked me, “How long should the testing take?”

The answer to the senior manager’s question is, “It depends.”

If you do test-driven development, there is rarely more than an iteration’s worth of at-the-end testing. When I coach teams who are transitioning to test-driven development, I recommend they plan for one iteration at the end of the project for final system test and customer acceptance test.

Once the team has more experience with test-driven development, they can plan better. I have found there is always a need for some amount of customer acceptance testing at the end. The amount of testing time varies by project and how involved the customers were all along. ...

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