After the feasibility analysis phase, a detailed estimation is required to be done so as to predict the effort required, and to identify whether the project is viable for automation and can provide a positive RoI. This effort estimation is the basic input to analyze the RoI for any project.

In this section, we will take a basic complexity-based estimation technique and learn how it can be utilized to estimate the effort made for design and execution activities on mobile devices. Along with the cost of this effort, the overall estimation will also include the cost of additional software licenses that may be required for mobile testing, such as a cloud tool, hosting server if a private cloud lab is to be set up, and of course the cost of devices. These one-time costs are in addition to the device usage costs that should be factored in if a pay-as-you-go model is being used, or if privately hosted devices have to use their own data plans and SIM cards.

To determine the overall...