Ways to Prioritize Tasks - II

Prioritize by criticality. Critical tasks are those that, if performed incorrectly or missed, have serious consequences either to the end user, to the product, or to the reputation of the company; for example, when the tasks result in a support line call, cause loss of data, or cause damage to the product or bodily harm to the user. In short, you want to make sure that you catch those tasks that result in the most pain and potentially bad publicity

Prioritize by vulnerability. Vulnerability in this case means those tasks that you suspect, even before testing, will be hard to perform or that have known design flaws. Often, the development team will have

a good handle on this and, when asked, will voice concern for a new feature, process, interface style, section of a document, and so on. 1/ so, include tasks in the test that address these major areas.

Sometimes, developers pretend, in the name of "being unbiased," that all functions work equally well (or poorly), and that none are particularly problematic Whether for a well-intended or a less noble

reason, they do not want known problems exposed during the test. Consequently, tasks that are obviously hard to perform and that represent whole components, web pages, or sections of a document are left out of the test and prove to be albatrosses much later when there is no time to fix them. To avoid that, use your critical judgment about which tasks/ features are not quite worked out, are new or never-before-tested features, or have been difficult for in-house personnel to perform. If you are unsure, a human factors specialist can help determine the vulnerable aspects of the product by performing an evaluation. (An expert evaluation can also help you to tighten your test objectives in general.)