Hardy did however provide some insight into the level of testing carried out by ACC's internal test team.

She says that this year, for continuous improvement releases (minor changes to existing systems), around six percent of the costs have been for testing;

However, generally speaking testing costs would not be expected to fall below 10 percent for a major project, excluding third-party test costs as part of the development cycle. "If these costs were included, we would estimate an average total test cost of 15 to 19 percent."

Several software testers who spoke to Computerworld during research for this article provided the following insights into testing methodologies.