Risk Based Testing is all about evaluating and pointing the likelihood of software failure. What’s the probability that the software will crash upon release? What would the expected impact look like? Think about “know-unknowns” in your software – this is what risk based testing is trying to unearth.
While it would be wonderful if we could have unlimited resources for testing – from our experience this is wishful thinking. Choices have to be made, and most of the time we go after issues that could prove critical for the business. When we define risk, we look at two dimensions as defined by HPE ALM (https://saas.hpe.com/en-us/software/alm): Business Criticality and Failure Probability. The first measures how crucial a requirement is for the business and the second indicates how likely a test based on the requirement is to fail.
Assessing risks
While there are many ways to approach risk assessment, we usually use HPE ALM because it’s a reliable tool and saves us a lot of time. It has an integrated questionnaire that allows us to determine the risk and functional complexity of a requirement and give possible values for each criterion plus a weight assigned to each value. This allows us to evaluate the testing effort and determine the best testing strategy.
In assessing risk, comparing the changes between two releases or versions is fundamental for quality assurance to identify the risk areas, reducing the total testing efforts, managing project risks, bringing lots of value with less effort and more efficient testing.
The testing team can explore the risks and provide their feedback on the test execution and whether or not to continue testing.
Advantages vs Disadvantages
For some projects, the big challenge is to accommodate the need to reduce development time, while maintaining the scope. Under these conditions, a smart risk testing approach is key in allowing the testing team to develop their software in a timely manner, making the testing effort more efficient and effective.
Dealing with the most critical areas of the system first will counteract the additional time and costs of solving those issues at a later stage in the project. And maximize on the fact that the time is spent according to the risk rating and original mitigation plans.
A faster time to market and reduction of cost per quality are more easily achievable with this risk-oriented approach.
Proper risk identification in the analysis process, prevents the negative impact that assessing a risk as too low or based on too subjective criteria, could have.
Identifying potential issues that could affect the project’s cost or outcome, create an efficient risk-based testing work and ensure better product quality.
Overall Benefits
Using a testing approach that takes risk into account, promotes some of the best practices in risk management, while conducting fewer tests with a more focused view on critical areas, higher testing efficiency, and increased cost-effectiveness.
We invite you to test these benefits out for yourself and try on this software testing approach for size. If the size fits don’t hesitate to share some of your best practices in risk assessment software with us at Euro-Testing.
Or if you are not sure what testing approach would suit you best, let us know here! And we will tailor the best solution for your needs.