I’ve recently been watching Blue Lights and there was mention of a risk chart, with the highest level of emergency being the colour brown - basically when everything goes to sh!t. Made me chuckle and also wonder what would a risk chart look like for testers?
Are there specific colours related to specific incidents? Maybe it includes symbols? What do you think?
I had a play around, and I found that I didn’t know who I was planning risks for. It sort of came down to the continued existence and profitability of the company, so very important risks, like death, become things like a catastrophic loss of business value - lawsuits, bad press, stock impact, loss of customer confidence, loss of brand value.
And that’s where I stopped, because I don’t want to roleplay thinking of “our product shouldn’t cause physical harm” as a business risk, it feels disgusting.
So I’d say you’d need to think about who your test clients are, and what the risks are to each of them, and how you balance them when they conflict.