Abstracts

Risk-based testing (RBT) is a well-known practise in the QA of software testing, yet it is mostly slept on due to manually tiresome and subjectively biased risk assessment. Nevertheless, setting priorities in ever-faster and agile software development cycles and AI-supported coding is more important than ever before. Assembling all stakeholders in regular meetings to assess the risk that is covered by individual testing tasks is, however, tedious and undermining the acceptance of RBT within the team. This raises the need for faster, automatable and more objective risk evaluation, taking all possible sources of risks into account.

In this tutorial, I want to introduce a new, innovative approach to RBT: Multilayered Risk-based Testing, also called the "Lasagna Principle". In this model, risks are evaluated out of different perspectives, resulting in a comprehensive risk assessment to guide the testing efforts. It also embraces automatable algorithms to deduct risk parameters without the need of constant re-evaluation including various stakeholders.

In the introduction, I want to briefly explain risk-based testing and also mention how the acceptance of this method can be increased by meaningful dialogue with involved stakeholders, transparent identification and rating of risks and how risks can be addressed during testing.

The tutorial part of this track will be about the theoretical background of the Lasagna Principle, and I will also demonstrate how it works in practise. During the workshop sessions, participants will have the option to try out the techniques themselves and applying them in a sample project in the test management tool Q12-TMT. The agenda comprises the following points:

1. Risk-based Testing Basics
2. Common Pitfalls in Risk Communication
3. Introduction to the Lasagna-Principle
4. Theory and Practice for each RBT-Layer
5. Aggregation of Layers into a Comprehensive Heatmap
6. Benefits and Practical Uses of the Lasagna-Principle in Everyday QA Life

After the track, participants will know how to set up and use multilayered RBT to streamline testing efforts to the most critical parts of the software under test for each release cycle.