Risk-based testing is a preferred approach for many industries. Especially in banking and financial industries, where the applications are updated and released at regular intervals, risk-based testing helps identify the risks to ensure system quality at the early stage of the project. Risk-based testing requires thorough test planning, preparation, and execution. One of the critical steps is to identify the risks through the different testing methods and categorize them accordingly. This article is a detailed study of different strategies and action plans for risk-based testing; and how to handle process risk categorization and prioritization.

Risk Prioritization

Prioritizing risks is crucial for creating a framework for allocating resources. The overall order of recognized risk events, their probability of occurrence, and their effect assessments are arranged in a risk prioritization analysis to create a most-to-least critical sequential order of identified risks.

For risk impact assessment and prioritization, a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies have been developed. The analysis of likelihood and impact, the building of a probability and impact matrix, risk categorization, and risk frequency rating are among the qualitative methodologies used (risks that have multiple impacts). The weighing of cardinal risk assessment of consequence, probability and timeframe, probability distributions, expected monetary value analysis, and modeling and simulation are examples of quantitative methodologies.

To use these strategies for identifying potential implications, defining inputs, and interpreting data, expert judgment is critical.

Risk Impact Assessment and Prioritization

Risk impact assessment is a procedure in which we assess the probabilities and consequences of possible risk events if they are found. The results of the assessments are helpful in prioritizing risks for establishing a ranking based on critical importance. This ranking of risks in terms of their critical importance is what determines the insights into the project’s management on how the resources would be needed to manage or to mitigate the realization of high probability and high consequence risk factors.

For some projects, the effects of the risk on organizational goals and tenets are more meaningful to the managing body. Risks must be dealt with against the potential negative effects on the organizational goals. The use of risk management tools for the organization and its components can help with the consistency of risk determination.

Law Of Diminishing Return

According to the law of diminishing return, a decreasing marginal output of production can be caused by an additional amount of a single factor of production. The law considers other factors to be constant.

Monitoring Risk: Risk Tracking and Risk Assessment

Most enterprises hold normal risk assessments on a regular schedule. Most often, these are annual occurrences, but it is ideal to monitor the ongoing risk mitigation and state of identified risks as a continuous activity.

We, as humans, monitor and react to risk constantly in our daily lives; therefore, one should deal with an organization’s risk mitigation in the same way. It’s a smart strategy to perform periodic risk reviews in advance. One should make time each month to review the highest probable and largest impact risk along with the mitigation strategy that allows for continuous improvement through risk tracking and risk management.

Risk Identification

Risk identification is the process of identifying risks that could prevent the enterprise or investment from achieving its goals. It includes documentation and communication of the concerns.

Program risk assessments, risk assessments for supporting an investment choice, examining an alternative, and assessing operational or cost uncertainty factors are only a few examples of risk assessments. To assist risk-informed decision-making, risk identification requires matching the type of assessment necessary.

The first step would be to identify the project goals and objectives, therefore developing a common understanding across the team of what is needed to complete the project successfully.

The goal of risk identification is to identify the events that may occur early in the process and may have negative effects on the ability of the project to achieve the required performance or capability for the outcome of the goals.

Risk Mitigation Planning, Implementation, and Progress Monitoring

Risk mitigation planning is the process in which options and actions are developed for enhancing opportunities and reducing threats to project objectives. And risk mitigation implementation is the process in which risk mitigation actions are executed. Risk mitigation progress monitoring consists of keeping track of the identified risks, identification of new risks, and evaluating the risk process and its effectiveness throughout the project.

The risk mitigation stage involves the development of mitigation plans designed for managing, eliminating, or reducing the risk to an acceptable level. Once a plan is implemented, it is constantly monitored to assess its effectiveness with the intent of revising the needed course of action.

Risk categorization in project management is the process of classifying risks based on their sources, areas of the impacted project, and other helpful categories for evaluating which parts of the project are most vulnerable to risks or uncertainties.

The common root of the causes is also used for risk categorization. This unusual project management technique aids in the identification of project work packages, phases, activities, and roles that may be used to construct an effective risk response strategy.

The basic goal of risk categorization is to avoid unpleasant setbacks.

It also results in a systematic and structured method for recognizing risks on a consistent basis. Another benefit is that it allows management to concentrate on recognizing a wide range of dangers. Conducting sessions with participants to work with a specific risk category is good for risk assessment.

Since diverse projects often involve distinct sources of risks and procedures, it’s impossible to define a one-size-fits-all risk category for all projects. Nonetheless, the project manager should construct the necessary number of categories for risk classification.

Test Coverage

Test coverage is defined as a metric that measures the amount of testing performed by a set of tests. It consists of gathering information about the parts of a program that are executed while running the test suite to analyze which branches of conditional statements have been taken. Simply put, it is a way of making sure that your tests are testing your system, or in other words, determining how much of your framework is effective by running the test.

What does test coverage do?

Text coverage performs the following functions:

• It finds the area of the requirement not implemented by a set of test cases.
• It helps in creating additional test cases to increase overall test coverage.
• It identifies a quantitative measure of test coverage that works as an indirect method for quality check.
• It identifies meaningless test cases that do not increase test coverage.

Yethi’s risk-based testing approach

Yethi follows a methodical risk-based testing approach by selecting test scenarios based on importance to customer & security, financial impact, the complexity of business logic, and integration points. We review business processes, business products, applications, and integration. We design test processes to bring high reusability and offer automated business process simulation for high-risk areas. 

We maintain a risk parameter based on our analysis of the business process, risk indexing and set of products. Our risk parameter consists of regulatory, financial impact, customer servicing, operations, and system risk classifying the risk levels into different categories based on the parameter. Finally, we prioritize the test cases based on risk parameters and risk level categories. We test banking and financial applications following a risk-based approach, which requires us to have expertise in handling risk categorization and prioritization.