While a test plan is being created, risks involved in testing the product are to be taken into consideration along with possibility of their occurrence and the damage they may cause along with solutions; if any. Detailed study of this is called as Risk Analysis.

Some of the risks could be:

New Hardware

New Technology

New Automation Tool

Sequence of code delivery

Availability of application test resources

Identify and describe the risk magnitude indicators: High, Medium and Low

High magnitude means the effect of the risk would be very high and non-tolerable. Company may face severe loss and its reputation is at risk. Must be tested.

Medium: tolerable but not desirable. Company may suffer financially but there is limited liability or loss of reputation. Should be tested.

Low: tolerable. Little or no external exposure. Little or no financial loss. Company’s reputation unaffected. Might be tested.

Three perspectives of Risk Assessment: Effect, Cause and Likelihood.

To assess risk by Effect, identify a condition, event or action and try to determine its impact.

To asses risk by Cause is opposite of by Effect. Begin by stating an undesirable event or condition and identify the set of events that could have permitted the condition to exist.

To asses risk by Likelihood is to determine the probability that a requirement will not be satisfied.

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Pilot testing involves having a group of end users try the system prior to its full deployment in order to give feedback on its performance.

Beta testing is testing of the product in the user environment.

From the definitions, its is evident that beta testing comes at last in development cycle; whereas pilot testing takes place before deployment of the system. Also, beta testing takes place in real time user environment and pilot testing in development environment. A selected group of users do pilot testing whereas beta testing is carried by all users.

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severity describes seriousness of the defect with respect to functionality where priority describes importance of defect to solve with respect to customer.
Example:

Suppose we identify two bugs

-The client logo is not appearing on the web site but the site is working fine... in this case the severity is low but the priority is high because from company's reputation it is most imp to resolve. After all the reputation wins more clients and projects and hence increases revinue

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Automation is chosen when

-A same set of tests need to be repeated again and again

-When a single test needs to be repeated for a large number of data

-When stable modules needs to be regressed frequently.

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