Fiona Charles

Quality Intelligence

Many organizations have embraced the concept of risk-based testing as a way to contain the costs of testing and focus test efforts on the system areas where undetected bugs could do the most harm. But too often, there is no substance behind the buzz-phrase, as testers are left to assess the risks without management and business support. Most testers are not trained to do this, and they may not have the detailed domain knowledge to know the true cost of a defect in the field.

To be an effective strategy, risk-based testing requires both accurate assessment of system risks and stakeholder buy-in.

In this webinar Fiona outlines a process that has worked in many leading organizations for conducting a system risk assessment, asking questions that will help to identify and assess the relative priority of risks, and ensuring stakeholder ownership of the result-which will both drive the test strategy and act as important information for many project decisions. It is a good introduction to Fiona’s tutorial at EuroSTAR Conference 2009, a more intensive interactive session which will focus specifically on identifying and practicing the kinds of questions that elicit business risk.