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

What’s cool about the training aspiring testers / fresher’s are subjected to?

Well, this blog is actually inspired by the excellent training programs that are conjured up to train fresher’s from campus in the field of Software Testing. The investment in terms of time, effort and money is just phenomenal. They typically go through a series of lectures, power point presentations, quizzes, self-reading (more like mugging up definitions for your board exams), etc… for a period of 3 – 6 months at the end of which they take up exams (again very similar to the board exams conducted by our prestigious universities). And the interesting point to note here is that these very same companies lament the fact that the university curriculum does not really prepare students for the industry. Talk about hypocrisy.

          I am not sure how many hours Sachin Tendulkar spent in classrooms, theoretically learning about the nuances of batting; listening to lectures and power point presentations rather than honing his skills on the field. Or for that matter how many lectures Aamir Khan had to listen to learn the art of acting. Well I really don’t think they would have spent too many valuable hours listening to just theoretical concepts. They are excelling in their fields due to the fact that they learnt from their seniors by observing them, picking up tips from their respective coaches, honing their skills with hours of practice, being unafraid to make mistakes with the conviction that it will only help them become a better practitioner in their chosen field.

          This is true of not only sports and the film industry. Look at the people who paint our houses so well, or our excellent carpenters. They did not pick up their skills in the classroom. Which brings us to the question – “Why can’t we do the same in the software industry? Especially Software Testing”. We can introduce fresher’s from campus to Software Testing by first letting them observe how some experienced Testers test applications / products, then engage them in ‘Paired Testing’ sessions with experienced Testers and giving them good direction to do a lot of self-learning in the Software Testing space. One really good link where there is a consolidated source of key things an aspiring tester should learn is – 

http://prabhatnayak.blogspot.com/2011/11/roadmap-for-aspiring-tester.html

          Apart from this, there are also some great Software Testing experts, whose articles one can read and follow their blogs to get regular updates on Software Testing and also new approaches to Testing, some of them are listed below – 

http://www.satisfice.com/blog/

http://jonbox.wordpress.com/

http://testertested.blogspot.com/

http://www.developsense.com/blog/

http://testobsessed.com/