
COURSE RBT | 2-DAY SESSION
Risk Based Testing
Course Outline
I. NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF RISK
- Murphy’s Law; O’Brien’s Law
- Relation of risk to software and testing
- Elements of risk
- Business impacts from systems and projects
- Direct and indirect forms of injury
- Management and technical risks
- Window of market opportunity
- Effects of delivering poor quality
- Software factors that increase likelihood
- Classical risk-reduction techniques
- Risk-based testing strategy
II. PROJECT MANAGEMENT RISKS
- Traditional checklists for project managers
- Late, over budget, poor quality
- Lack of management support
- Shifting priorities
- Organizational/strategic change
- Demand fails to materialize or is too great
- Staffing difficulties and interruptions
- Vendor nonperformance
- Relying on new technologies
- Overtaken by competitors’ innovations
- Poor reviews
- Fraud, security breaks, and sabotage
- Software risks--or just poor management
- Changing requirements and scope creep
- Poor estimates
III. CONVENTIONAL TESTING APPROACHES
- Evaluating risks of the intended tests
- Why this approach is reactive
- Strengths and weaknesses
- Difficulties communicating importance
- Translating into business outcomes
IV. PROACTIVE RISK-BASED TESTING
- Advantages of being truly proactive
- Prioritization demands knowing the choices
- Proactive Testing Life Cycle
- Structured model of test planning
- Multiple levels of risk analysis
- Project-level proactive risk analysis
- Involving all the stakeholders
- Identifying overlooked project-specific risks
- Prioritizing and clustering
- Defining tests that reduce the key risks
- Letting testing drive development
- Gaining user, manager, developer support
- Identifying and analyzing lower-level risks
- Differentiating user and technical views
- Checklists to detect common risks
- Risk analysis in test designs and test cases
- Deciding which tests to emphasize
- Risks of not testing some things
- Metrics to monitor effectiveness
- Improving over time














