Article –
Introduction to Risk-Based Testing
Risk-based testing (RBT) has been around in various forms for over 20 years, and accepted as a mainstream approach for over half that time, now being an integral part of popular certification schemes, such as ISTQB, and the basis of the new ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119 Software Testing standards.
We all use risk on a day-to-day basis in our daily lives (e.g. ‘should I walk the extra 50 metres to the pedestrian crossing or save time and cross here?’) and similarly many businesses are based on the management of risk, perhaps most obviously those working in finance, such as banks and insurance companies. Despite this, and the fact that RBT is not a complex approach in theory, it is still rare to see RBT being applied as successfully as it could be.
This article initially introduces the basic RBT concepts and then highlights the main obstacles to effectively implementing RBT and suggests means of addressing them in practice.
