What is risk analysis?
Risk analysis is a process used to identify, assess, and prioritize potential risks that may impact a project, decision, or system. Evaluate likelihood, potential consequences.
Why? Helps making informed decisions and take appropriate actions to mitigate and manage risks.
Steps
- Identify risks
- Risk assessment: Determine likelihood (low, high). Identify impact and consequences (financial loss, time delay, reputation damage). Prioritize risks.
- Identify strategies/actions to reduce those risks
- Continuous monitor
Example: Risks and Contingencies
Risk | Impact | Probability | Owner | Trigger | Mitigation |
Restricted data access | Validations impossible | high | X Inc | Testing data can be used instead of real production data | To provide data access for testing |
Changes to the original requirements or designs | Re-testing features that have been already tested & moving sprints to later dates | high | X Inc /
A Team | Unscheduled changes | Do not change requirements and design at the last moment; thorough planning of features development & testing for each sprint |
Delay in providing credentials and configuration manuals for various systems (DBs, APIs, analytical services, etc.) | Delay in planned testing dates | high | X Inc | Differences in time zone; any other external reasons such as PTO/sick leaves of tech specialists from X side, etc. | To provide credentials & configurations for testing ASAP |
The testing environment is unstable | No ability to receive stable valid answers according to requirements from the system; delay in planned testing dates | high | A Team | FE solution can be provided faster than BE so QAs might not be able to receive the appropriate data from BO | To provide features for testing when testing environments are stable |
Test configurations don’t cover all the existing combinations of environments | Successful test execution might not be enough to assure that the system is fully functional and secure | high | X Inc /A Team | There might not be provided the full list of existing application configurations | To provide test configurations like-in-production environment for testing |
The configurations, which successfully passed testing, may be moderated | Updated configuration may contain errors and bugs unless specific configuration functioning was a part of described release scope | high | X Inc | Congiguration changes & updates | To provide test configurations like-in-production environment for testing; to test new configurations after updating to assure they do not contain critical bugs and errors |
Moving Release dates early or expanding the Release scope | Impacts testing scope and increases the risk of bugs/errors appearing | high | X Inc | Unscheduled changes in release dates | Should be subject to an additional agreement between A and X Inc |
Public Holidays, sick leave, and annual leave of project team members | Impacts the timelines | high | A Team | Differences in Public Holidays of project team; any external circumstances such as COVID, PTO, etc. | Should be shared with X Inc. ASAP |
Revealing P1/ P2 bugs during full regression testing | Moving Release Dates later | high | A Team | Full regression with updated test data | Should be subject to an additional agreement between A and X Inc |
Additional investigation of issues/questions which are not release-related, or not under the warranty period | Moving Release Dates later | high | X Inc /A Team | Any additional requests from X side after the Integration Monitor implementation | Should be subject to an additional agreement between A and X Inc |
