Overcoming Testing Challenges in Project Life Cycle using Risk Based Validation Approach K. Nageswara Rao Professor & Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, P.V.P.Siddhartha Institute of Technology Kanuru, Vijayawada-7, Andhra Pradesh, India. A. Pathanjali Sastri Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Applications, V.R.Siddhartha Engineering College, Kanuru, Vijayawada-7, Andhra Pradesh, India. Abstract — According to James Whittake, Microsoft Testing Expert and Author, “There are a number of trends that testers are going to have to grapple with. The first is that software is getting better. The result of this is that bugs are going to become harder and harder to find and the weaker testers will be relegated to Darwinian insignificance. Keeping sharp, building skills and maintaining a cutting edge testing knowledge has never been more important”. The key drive for software testing is capturing defects. Testing is becoming a lot more complex. Most software products are not tested thoroughly, so both users and the organizations that write the software expect them to have bugs. There is more and more realization that testing becomes a bottleneck without upfront planning and projects need consider that in software development reducing defects is substantially important. When a project is low on funding or over budget, the first important task that is cut is ‘Testing’. But limiting testing of a solution will increase the chance of system failure or unknown bugs that can cripple your business. This paper focuses on the approaches that can be considered to reduce the number of defects captured in testing or later phase of testing. Keywords: Domain Test Engineers, Subject Matter Expert, Test Automation, Risk Based Approach. I. INTRODUCTION The main Challenge for any testing environment will be obviously to test the application for its perfect functionality according to the requirement specifications and well within the acceptable time limit. In well run software organizations testing is not a defect detection activity. Rather, testing should merely verify that the software performs correctly under a wide range of operational conditions. By understanding and addressing the major causes of defects, quality can be designed in from the start, substantially reducing both the cases (a) about 40% of project effort typically spent on rework and (b) the risks to which software exposes business. This paper will cover "best practices" recommendations to help avoid the pitfalls associated with traditional software testing and focus on software testing with the key objectives of reducing the cost of the project test phase. It also provides a framework that assures that reviews are conducted by experienced, qualified, and dispassionate experts and that projects are on track. This paper is organized as follows. Section II provides basic differences between verification and validation; Section III briefly discusses of importance of software testing in project life cycle; Section IV describes the challenges faced during testing phase of a large project through a case study; and Section V discusses in detail the analyses of the above challenges/problems. II. VERIFICATION VS VALIDATION Verification answers the question, "Are we building the product or system right?" It involves doing the right things up front in a software development project - using best practices for requirements, analysis, design, construction, deployment, and monitoring and ensuring auditable workflows throughout. Verification is the process of doing reviews and walk-through and conducting interviews. Validation answers the question, "Are we building the right product or system?" Many vendors today are building their products right, but studies show that they are not always building the right products. Validation requires involvement from all stakeholders in the specification of requirements and throughout development. Validation is the process of doing actual testing in the source code. K. Nageswara Rao et al. / International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering (IJCSE) ISSN : 0975-3397 Vol. 3 No. 3 Mar 2011 1232