Summary

• The time required for acceptance testing tasks varies with the story and needs to be accounted for in story estimates.

• In our experience, acceptance test tasks generally take anywhere from 20% to 50% of development time, depending on how dynamic the application is, how new the technology is, the team's experience with testing that type of software, and other factors.

• Either start with a percentage of the programmers' estimate and work backward to fit in your tasks or start with the high-level acceptance tests and add up the estimates for the related tasks.

• Do your estimate in whatever units work best for you, such as ideal hours, then convert to the same units the programmers use.

• Add the acceptance test task estimates to the programmers' estimates for the stories.

Try it out yourself in the following exercise.