Risk-Based Test Management

(CSTP #3)

This tutorial counts as training towards the Certified Software Test Professional requirements.

Risk Analysis is a term that we hear regularly, but very few projects actually apply it as a Best Practice discipline. In order to qualify as “Best Practice”, the analysis and ranking process must meet the fundamental requirements for a reproducible and defensible practice. Further, Risk Management techniques are only useful if the test effort can manage its test assets effectively.

This seminar is designed to give the student a thorough grounding in Risk Analysis and Test Asset Management as a “Best Practice” approach to software testing that will yield a significant and demonstrable ROI for the Test Effort. The methods and techniques taught in this seminar ensure the correct focus of the test effort, and provide testers and test managers with tools they can use to automate their test process and provide optimal test efficiency.

This tutorial is based on the book Software Testing Fundamentals,” authored by the presenter (Published by Wiley, 2003). It is a field guide aimed squarely at testers and test managers. It contains practical solutions, to real life testing challenges. It includes examples from both traditional and Agile/eXtreme projects. The seminar is filled with real world examples of how testers successfully managed their test efforts and demonstrated the value of testing. This seminar contains working examples, and starter templates that you can take home and put to work.

Note: This seminar teaches the fundamental concepts that are the foundation of the one day seminar: Identifying and Executing the Most Important Tests.

 

Course Outline

Background and Concepts
1. Introduction
2. Fundamental methods and metrics for software and testing
3. Test estimation and sizing
a. The Test Inventory
Tools and analysis techniques for test estimation and planning
Identify and Enumerate Tests, fill out the Inventory, prioritize the tests, identify the most important tests, estimate the effort, track the test effort and evaluate it
4. Analysis techniques for enumerating tests and test environments
5. Risk analysis
a. Establishing Test Priority
b. Relating risk to test coverage
c. Requirements
6. Finishing the Test Estimation Effort
a. Setting schedules, and goals
b. Estimating the resources and time required to test the most important tests
c. Negotiating for resources to conduct the test effort
7. Reporting status and demonstrating test performance Using S-Curves
8. Adding value beyond the test effort

You will learn how to:
• Build a test inventory, and automate it
• Establish your own risk criteria, apply them to the test inventory and determine the risk associated with each test
• Pick the most important tests from the inventory
• Estimate the cost of running the most important tests, and how much this testing can save by finding bugs before the product is shipped
• Use worksheets to estimate the resources and time required to conduct a give test effort, and aid in negotiating for those resources

The methods presented in this tutorial have been used to test a rich variety of Internet/Intranet applications and traditional client server applications including; e-commerce, telecommunications, ERP and other business applications, embedded firmware, and game software. These methods can be applied to traditional test efforts and more importantly, they are useful in keeping up with and adding measurable value to Agile and eXtreme efforts.