Pragmatic Software Testing: Becoming an Effective and Efficient Test Professional

Chapter 7. Quality Risk Analysis Exercise

Let’s put what you’ve learned about quality risk analysis to work for our hypothetical Omninet project. In this exercise, you’ll analyze the quality risks for Omninet. Assume that you are doing this analysis during the requirements specification phase of the project. Use only the Omninet Marketing Requirements Document (MRD), which is included in Appendix A.

I recommend that you apply the informal quality risks analysis technique, unless you know ISO 9126 or Failure Mode and Effect Analysis or want to try them. To make this exercise even more lifelike and more valuable, see if you can work as a small team with some other people. In such a team, have each person take a different perspective, such as programmer, tester, marketer, business analyst, project manager, and others.

In the previous chapter, I provided an informal template. I’d suggest that you use that, and use a list of quality risk categories like the one from Chapter 5. I suggest 120 minutes as a time limit. When you’re done, keep reading this chapter to see my solution.

As discussed in Chapter 6, first identify the risks, then prioritize them. Once you have an aggregate priority, use that priority to guide the extent of testing in each risk area. To briefly recap, I suggest you use five levels of extent:

• Extensive testing: Test the entire risk area with many variations.

• Broad testing: Test the entire risk area but with few variations.

• Cursory testing: Test a sample of the risk area, ...