Risk Based Testing

Recently I came across a colleague of mine who was working on an assignment for a client of his on implementing the ‘Risk Based Testing’ methodology for their clients. The concept sounded very interesting to me and so I asked him to explain it to me further. So this is a brief of what they were implementing for their clients – the objective was to reduce the regression testing cycle by reducing the number of test cases to be executed and hence the amount of time taken to execute one regression test cycle.

          The methodology they used was very simple – traverse through all the test cases and assign a factor of ‘Priority’ to each test case which denotes the significance of the test case from the business standpoint and also assigning a factor of ‘Risk’ to the test case denoting the probability of the test case failing. Now the product of these two factors is taken and based on a predetermined baseline, only those test cases are executed which meet the baseline. Now all this may sound simple but what is very important here to note is the dependence on people who have a thorough understanding of the product or application on which RBT (Risk Based Testing) methodology is being implemented.

          The above approach is purely a mathematical / formula based approach to RBT, another approach to go about RBT is using the following heuristics for testing of the product / application under test – 

·         Losing the Confidence of Customers

·         Loss of Money

·         Loss of Life

·         Loss of Effort / Time

·         Loss of Business

·         Loss of Image / Brand

·         Losing Customers to Competitors

·         Losing Data

·         Not Adapting Quickly