I am currently preparing a proposal to a client for a large web application development. My environment is outsourced software development. I need to budget QA time for the project.
Usually, from practice, I used a mix of the following:
- Base case scenario: QA estimated at 15% of the development team time. With some percentage point changes based on the mix of juniors and seniors as well as back-end to front-end tasks. Usually front-end and junior - make more QA needs. Whereas back-end and seniors - make less.
- Commercial considerations. There are more often than not, very down-to-earth considerations in terms of time utilization.
Questions:
- Is QA budgeted 15% of dev time an industry standard? I always had the impression it was. But recently someone challenged this in a discussion putting the number higher.
- Is there a smarter way? Some more sophisticated drivers than the ones I use. Any article to link on the matter?
Thanks!