With any major undertaking, it is important to define and measure "success".
There are two important areas of measurement for success � progress and quality.
Progress
You
should measure test development against the test development plan. If goals are
not reached, act quickly to find the problems. Is the subject matter clear? Are
stake holders providing enough input? Is it clear what to test (overall, per
module)? Is the team right (enough, right skill set mix)?
You
should measure automation and look at things such as implemented keywords
(actions) and interface definitions (defined interface dialogs, pages, etc).
You
should measure test execution looking at things such as how many modules are
executed and how many executed correctly (without errors)?
Quality
Some of the key quality metrics include:
Coverage of system and requirements
Assessments by peers, test leads, and by stake holders (recommended)
Effectiveness
Are you finding bugs?
Are you missing bugs?
Can you find known bugs (or seeded bugs)?
After the system is released, what bugs still come up? You should
consider calculating the "Defect Detection Percentage" (Dorothy Graham,
Mark Fewster)