Let’s begin with an analogy about software testing. Suppose for a moment that bugs are like medical conditions (no pun intended). The process we use to identify them is like the medical one: through differential diagnosis. We detect the harmful situation and offer a course of treatment. Yet we are all familiar with situations where things can get complicated, just like in the medical field. In software testing, one of the most challenging situations we can encounter relates to a particular type of errors: the false positives and false negatives. What are they and how do we approach them?
Risk Based Testing is all about evaluating and pointing the likelihood of software failure. What’s the probability that the software will crash upon release? What would the expected impact look like? Think about “know-unknowns” in your software – this is what risk based testing is trying to unearth.