Test Efficiency

What is Test Execution Efficiency?

It is generally very difficult to measure the efficiency of the testing process or the testing team for a project. Test Efficiency helps to calculate the efficiency of testing i.e. how many defects were leaked to the customer as compared to number of defects reported by the testing team. Generally almost 10-15 % of defects will be leaked and is considered acceptable. In the recent years, Companies have stared spending huge amount of money for developing quality. Due to this defect leakage percentage has come down to less than 10%.

How to Measure?

The Excel Sheet Attached helps us to calculate the efficiency of a testing process based on the number of defects reported by Customer and to the number of defects identified by the Testing Team.

Steps:

1) Provide Ranking to each severity.

In the excel sheet the severity rankings have been assigned as

a) Critical--4

b) Serious – 3

c) Moderate –2

d) Minor –1

2) Collect the list of defects reported by the Testing and Customer based on Severity.

For example:

The customer has Reported 1 Critical, 1 Serious, 2 Moderate and 5 Minor Defects. The Testing Team should have identified these defects.

The Testing Team has Reported 10 Critical, 5 Serious, 10 Moderate and 10 Minor Defects.

The Test Efficiency is calculated as follows: (T/T+C) * 100

T=4*10+5*3+10*2+10*1=85

C= 1*4+1*3+2*2+5*1=16

So Test Efficiency is (85/85+16) * 100=84.16%

Suppose if the Customer had not identified any defects in above example then the Test Efficiency will be 100%.

Consider a small project in which the testing team and customer did not find any defects (Assume you had a good programmer who did unit testing properly) then also the Test Efficiency will be 100%.If the Testing Team Failed to find any Defects and the Customer were finding them then the efficiency of the testing will be 0%. The formula used required fine-tuning in this case.

Find Defects Otherwise the Customer Will!