With the combination of new features into the application or product, it becomes imperative to test the impact of new features or changes in system performance. Therefore, impact analysis is performed.
What is impact analysis?
Impact analysis is the analysis of the effects of changes in deployed products or applications. It provides information about the areas of the system that may be affected by changes in specific parts or features of the application.
Impacts are analyzed on requirements, design and architecture, impact on testing and affect progress.
Why impact analysis is done
- It is done to understand the results that can make change. Adding too much functionality to a product can reduce the overall performance of the product.
- To identify all files, documents and models that may have to be modified if the team decides to make changes in the product.
- To estimate the necessary effort behind making changes.
- To determine the tasks needed to make changes.
- It will list the dependencies on a specific element.
The information you should put in an impact analysis document
Impact analysis documents can be used as a checklist. It is used to evaluate changes required before working with them. Impact analysis documents should provide details such as:
- Brief description of the problem.
- Explain or show examples of how defects cause failure or inefficiencies.
- Includes complex estimates.
- Includes cost estimates and time to fix.
- Function to be tested.
- List the new test cases created for change.
- Refer to the document – Referring to references, technical specifications, …
For example:
Analysis of material effects.
- Change Request ID:
- Kind:
- Describe:
- Preparation date:
- Estimated priority:
- Related benefits
- Related effects
- Related costs
- Related risks
- The total effort estimate: … .. how many hours
- Estimated how much effort: …… .. how many hours
- Expected impact schedule: …… days
- Quality is affected;
- Other requests affected:
- Other tasks affected:
- Combination problem:
How to present the impact of impact analysis
Impact analysis can be marked by color codes to represent important changes or impacts of changes in the system. The color codes are as shown below.
- Red-strong
- Yellow-medium
- Blue-weak
The table above explains the impact of changes made
- The features highlighted in red indicate the main features are changed, yellow is the features that are less affected by the change and the green is the weakest.
- The features are mentioned vertically like the features are changed while horizontal features are mentioned that make the changes possible. For example, in the above example the change in feature 1 affects feature3
- For a large project where features and functions are more then on the board can not be used any. In such cases, another approach is adopted, in which straight development marks the degree of influence due to changes in key features. As shown below, where the impact of the main feature is marked for the corresponding child features.
Sample questions must be addressed to perform impact analysis
- What are the adverse side effects or risks of suggesting changes?
- Are there any tools that are acquired to make and check for change?
- If the change is accepted how many effort invested will be lost?
- Does the proposed change adversely affect performance requirements?
- To verify the change proposed not to use another input is required?
- Are there changes that increase product costs?
- Will the proposed changes be something that current officials have knowledge and skills?
- Are there any proposed changes to any need that cannot accept any computer resources?
Best practices for analyzing impact changes
- Before starting with impact analysis, make sure that the test request does not contain information about the parts of the project that are affected by the changes.
- Continued communication between dev and tester, do not miss any changes needed to make in the final product.
- Determine if any UI changes, deletions or additions are required.
- Estimates of acceptance numbers, systems or integration tests of those cases will be required.
- Identify the impact of change suggest a project plan, configuration management plan, quality assurance plan.
Conclude
- Impact analysis will ensure that part of the application must be changed.
- The impacts on the system are analyzed on requirements, design and architecture, test impact, …
- It helps the level of regression testing is necessary for configuration management, quality assurance planning.
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