Your Guide to Understanding Risk-Based Testing
Tags: testing, qa, agile, beginners
Published: 2022-07-25 18:21:02

The goal of risk-based testing is to concentrate testing on key functions and spend more time on them. It is possible to manage the test process through intelligent evaluation and convey the predicted implications of actions taken by combining the focused process with metrics.

Risk is the occurrence of an unknown event that has a positive or negative impact on a project's measured success criteria. It could be something that happened in the past, something that is happening now, or something that will happen in the future. These unforeseen events might have an impact on an entire project's cost, business, technical, and quality goals.

## What Is Risk-Based Testing?

A risk-based testing approach is a method of software testing that is based on risk likelihood. It entails analyzing the risk based on software complexity, business criticality, frequency of use, and probable defect areas, among other factors. Risk-based testing prioritizes testing of software program aspects and functions that are more important and likely to have flaws.

A thorough plan guarantees that testing is carried out in such a way that even if a person discovers a flaw in production, it does not prevent them from using the application nor does it have a substantial impact on the business.

### Product, Project, and Process Risks

Negative risks pose a threat to the project's success, and solutions to reduce or eliminate them must be implemented. Risk-based testing offers insight into these risks that will have a far-reaching effect across the product and process requirements needed to succeed.

There are three groups of risks the team may encounter during the software development process: 

- **Product risks** – lack and/or stability of requirements, complexity of the product, etc. that eventually cause a mismatch in the end functionality and the needs of users and/or stakeholders’ expectations. 
- **Project risks** – issues caused due to the external dependencies, such contractual issues, delays on the contractor’s side, personal issues, non-work related constraints, and so on.
- **Process risks** – issues related to planning and internal management of the project, including inaccurate estimates, delays, non-negotiable deadlines, underestimation of project complexity or other important aspects, etc.

The impact of these risks can affect both the user and the business with dire consequences such as financial impact from unhappy customers, penalties, legal liabilities, losing market share, losing customers, and tainted company reputation.

### Risk-Based Testing Strategy

A risk-based testing strategy uses risk as the criterion in all aspects of the testing cycle, including test planning, design, implementation, execution, and reporting. Ideally, a large number of different test case combinations would be created. The strategy involves ranking tests based on the severity of the risks to identify the most defective or risky areas that would have impact on the business.

The fundamental goal of risk analysis is to categorize high and low ranked elements related to features and functionalities. The highly ranked components become the focus of both automated and manual software testing efforts while concentrating less on lower ranked elements. This is the risk analysis, which is the first step before starting any risk-based software testing.

## Benefits of Risk-Based Testing

**Enhanced User Focus:** Risk-based testing focuses on thoroughly testing features that directly affect customers and those that pose a higher risk. This enhances business performance, lowers the chance of bad evaluations, and lessens the overall impact of each identified risk.

**Improved Quality:** Risk-based testing prioritizes higher-risk areas and ensures that the most critical functions are tested first. As a result, the program can be released with the assurance that its core and customer-facing functionalities are up to par.

**Better Testing Coverage:** It becomes easier to decide what to test, where to start, and when to cease testing after risks have been recognized and their impact evaluated. In other words, defining the scope of testing as well as the priority of test execution within constrained deadlines becomes easy. This gives every development project the structure it needs to organize hundreds of tests that can be incorporated in automating regression testing.

## When to Use Risk-Based Testing

A number of factors can increase the chances of risk occurring that includes the development team having a poor knowledge of the feature/s or resulting in an inferior design, insufficient time planning and inadequate resources. However, these are exactly the type of situations when risk-based testing should be used.

### Risk-Based Testing in Agile

Risk-based testing in Agile is highly beneficial when having to complete testing within defined sprints in order to maintain software quality. It also helps establish a framework that allows testers, developers, and other stakeholders to have a clear discussion about the risks at hand. Essentially, it separates risks so that they can be identified and addressed.

It considers both consumer and development needs when determining what constitutes a risk and highlights the features that are most important to customers. Moreover, it provides a hierarchy of testing criteria for managing budgets, negotiating timeframes, and avoiding delays.

This is also in the best interests of customers and business owners, as risk-free software promotes high-quality user experiences and income streams. All of the above can be accomplished in a limited amount of time with risk-based testing, allowing the implementation of the core spirit of Agile development and testing.

## Choosing What to Test 

So who should evaluate the risks and how does this process go? Those who have a good awareness of the overall challenges or inadequate solution delivery are the greatest candidates for risk assessment. Product owners, solution architects, and SMEs are usually skilled at recognizing delivery risks. Those with domain or technical understanding can spot dangers associated with the solution's deficiencies.

Testers must also conduct a high-quality test assessment that specifies the testing method for the proposed solution. If the strategy is ineffective, the likelihood of serious software failure when the software goes into production rises. Testers can also effectively report on the state of the solution being tested in terms other than defects found and tests completed. With a thorough understanding of product risk, they can provide all stakeholders with an assessment of readiness to go live based on the perceived risk to the business.

Risk-based testing encompasses the planning, design, and the execution of testing operations based on the modules' priority. The focus areas for assessing the risk of an application should include:

- Areas that are prone to defects.
- Business critical functionality.
- Frequently used features and functions.
- Security functionality.
- Areas of complexity.
- New product changes.

## Common Mistakes with Risk-Based Testing

There are several ways to isolate, analyze, and evaluate risk, which can take different forms – depending on context. But regardless, there are common mistakes to avoid.

- Doing risk analysis at the end of product development process
- Incorrectly determining the acceptable level of risk.
- Only focusing on high-risk areas.
- Not identifying risks that affect future performance.
- Those involved in the risk assessment don’t have experience or knowledge in fully understanding the impact of results.

It's critical to start the risk analysis during planning and development to appropriately analyze the application and develop an effective approach. And with the right resources in place, you will be able to effectively execute a well-defined testing strategy that covers vulnerable points.

## Conclusion

When done effectively, risk-based assessment and testing can quickly deliver important outcomes for an organization. Because skilled specialists assess risk at each stage of delivery, the quality of deliverables starts with the requirements. The efficiency of risk-based testing and deployment will be determined by a number of important factors: a rigorous and well-structured analysis and testing plan and execution with proper communication to all project stakeholders.

Any software application's success is determined on its functionality and usefulness. Software must be secure and work properly in a variety of environments, which necessitates comprehensive testing. QA Madness provides software testing services that offer best practice in testing methodologies that ensures higher quality assurance.