Managing risk

Risk-based testing allows you to prioritize what needs to be tested based on the risk that is associated with various test plans and test cases. With risk-based testing you can focus your resources on those test artifacts that have the highest likelihood of failure or the greatest impact if failure occurs. Ultimately, risk-based testing helps your team mitigate risk.

About this task

Here is how it works. During the planning process, a team member evaluates the overall risk by defining one or several risk factors. The software uses these risk factors to calculate an overall risk assessment.

Then, other team members review the original risk assessment and select a risk ranking of their own in the My Risk section. The software then calculates a Community Risk by averaging the My Risk selections of each user. It is important to understand that the Community Risk ranking is separate from the original Risk Assessment. When a user supplies a My Risk ranking, the calculations that contribute to the Community Risk have no impact on the original Risk Assessment.