Assessment of Risks Associated with The Work Schedule
Once you have estimated how many people, tools and hours are required to test a software product, you will need to assess the risks associated with these estimates. This is done under the assumption that something may break down during the test. Further, it is easy to make a strategic plan for eliminating problems that arise. The amount of effort required to mitigate the effect of the materialized risks will give an idea of how much the estimates can deviate from the actual values of time and money. The risks included in the estimates obtained are to be immediately reported to the senior management during the estimate review process.
The following are examples of risks that affect a test schedule:
- Hardware required for software testing is not available at the initial stage of the work.
- The software product to be tested has not been available for testing.
- Test cases are not ready to be tested.
- People assigned to do testing cannot get started.
- Changes made to requirements during test development or during testing.
- Modification of user interfaces during test development or during testing.
- The staff have not got a full grasp of new testing facilities by the start of test run.
Risk analysis often entails developing a plan to mitigate the effects of risk management. For example, if you are convinced that test cases are not ready be used for test execution, there is a good reason to attract more people to the testing work. If this process depends on how often you deliver new equipment necessary for the implementation of the project, then, by placing this dependence on the work schedule and assessing the associated risks, you notify the project management that the delivery period for new equipment should be the starting time of test activity but not the date of its shipment. Stress testing service is available to verify robustness of digital product by testing it beyond it normal capacity.
The common risk management practice involves linking each risk with the likelihood of this risk and the corrective actions to the project if the risk does occur. For example, it may be possible to reveal the fact that, most likely (with a probability of 90%), the main specialists for one reason or another will not be able to start testing as scheduled, so the probability of work schedule breach is assessed as high (on a scale high, moderate, low).