Build
Training time per person
How long each person needs to become productive in the tool, multiplied by the number of people trained.
- Unit
- hours per person, one-time
- Where you enter it
- Build tab, Detailed mode, per vendor, alongside the number of people trained.
What it means
The learning curve, costed: the hours each person spends in training, documentation and their first supervised cases before they are producing at the build rate the rest of the model assumes. Multiplied by the number of people trained, it becomes part of the one-time build cost.
It is per vendor because the curve differs by category: a codeless tool aimed at business testers has a short one; a code-first framework assumes engineers who already know the language.
Why it matters to the cost
Training is the cost that vendors' demos hide and that teams underestimate for code-first tools. Ten people at 24 hours each is 240 hours — about $16,000 at the default rate — before the first case exists. It also interacts with who your testers are: a framework that is cheap for engineers can be unusable for a team of business analysts.
Typical values
Codeless and AI-native tools: 4–16 hours per person. Script-based tools and frameworks: 24–80 hours for someone new to the language.
Typical values describe a category of tool — AI-native, codeless, script-based, homegrown, manual — never a named product. Why we do not price named products.
Where it appears in the model
Build — one-off
- Total test cases
- basic + average + complex Test case complexity tiers
- Build effort
- Set up, install and configure + Scoping the suite + Training time per person × People trained
- + Σ Test case complexity tiers × Build time per test case for each tier, as Scratch vs migration
- Build cost
- Build effort × Effective hourly rate + Build tokens priced as Token cost
Every name is a link to its definition. See the whole model.
Try it with your numbers
Training time per person is a row in the calculator. Change it and every total on the page moves with it — free, in your browser, nothing to install.
See how training time per person impacts the calculation of test automation costsLast reviewed 2026-09-15. All terms.