Week 5
Discussion
Project Risk Management
Ethical Dilemma: Risks of Robustness of Testing
First, consider the following case study situation:
Risk management often brings up ethical issues for project
managers. For instance, software testing
can be done in several different ways and with several different levels of
rigor and comprehensiveness. Simpler
tests may be faster and cheaper and may involve less system downtime, possibly
using fewer test cases and fewer test runs.
More robust testing may be rather expensive and time consuming,
including extensive and rigorous test cases, many test runs, regression testing
of previously completed production software, and so forth.
The PM often must balance robustness of testing with time
and cost. (Recall the multi-way balance
of the triple constraint.) Sometimes, it
can boil down to a trade-off between acceptable quality and delivering a system
on schedule and on budget. Either way it
goes, that is a risk. The approach
usually depends on both the criticality and the context of the system.
Then answer these questions:
a) From a risk
management and project management point of view, in what situation(s) should a
system be more robustly tested?
b) In what
situation(s) might less testing be acceptable?
c) Suppose you were
the project manager facing pressure from your customer or executive sponsor to
reduce testing time when you believe more robust testing was needed. What approach would you use to try to
convince the executive manager to follow your advice?
