Regression testing is an essential type of software testing that you need to perform when your software product undergoes several changes in its life cycle. In addition, this type of testing is done to ensure that software will work fine and as expected after any code changes, the addition of new features, updates, or improvement.
However, in the case of performing inappropriate regression testing, the result can become an unnecessary pain. Not only this but also this poor testing implementation can stop the previous working of features or functions within the software application. If this condition happens, the customer can give a shit about your brand. They can also become angry, frustrated, and maybe never choose you again for shopping or at the time of selecting your service and products. Thus, correct the mistake and try to make your testing effective.
Moreover, if you don’t conduct the regression testing well, your system/application will suffer from defects/loopholes and become unreliable. Moreover, to build high-quality software and to increase more test coverage in less time, you should improve your regression testing process.
However, if you are thinking of how you will enhance your regression testing and how you can reduce it to 48 hours, then you need to stay on this page to acquire the information or tips that we’ve explained below to boost your regression testing.
7 Best Ways to Improve the Regression Testing Process
Understand the Right Time to Perform Regression Testing
Regression testing is vital when any of the given situations occur during the software development life cycle.
- A bug is fixed
- Any implementation related to change of requirements
- Implementation of new features, functionality, or business rule.
- Development of a new component, module, or subsystem which is integrated with the existing system or modules.
Know the Scope of Regression Testing
If we clearly define or understand the impact of change, regression testing may not be needed. But perfect impact analysis is not feasible except in very fundamental circumstances. Therefore, we must rely on other techniques, such as regression testing, to uncover unknown effects.
Whenever you plan to get testing services, always ask the scope of your software’s testing from the vendor because the purpose of the scope of a test is to define what areas of the product should be tested, what functionalities need to be focused on, what bug types are important to fix for your customers first, and what features or areas should not be tested by any means.
Make sure, understanding the scope of regression testing is necessary in order to be a successful regression testing service provider. On the other hand, if there is a scope of testing, you should conduct it; if something is out of scope, there is no need to operate that testing.
In other words, you can understand we must maintain a balance between the amount of testing with risk, tools, and resources since the scope of regression testing could be large, mainly when you try to make changes in system elements such as database management systems and operating systems because these elements can impact the functionality of your application system. Similarly, server updates that come under non-software changes can also influence the overall system’s performance and functionality. Therefore, based on high-risk applications and low-risk applications, you must know the scope of testing. After that, you must have specific test cases to improve your regression testing practice.
Pay Attention to Essential Functionality
This testing is confirmatory and very simple. Rest, it depends upon your capability, which means how much time you need to perform the regression test and how good domain expertise you have. If you are a testing service provider, you must pay attention to essential functionality and should perform testing accordingly to make the application usable.
For instance, in a word processing application, functions like merging documents and spell checking are so complex but are the most useful features within the application.
Similarly, basic functions that people use on a regular basis are Opening a document, creating a document, printing a document, and saving a document. If these functions don’t work appropriately, then it would be difficult for you to run other more complex functions.
However, whether the function is simple or complex, it doesn’t matter. But what matters the most is how great you’ve performed the regression testing.
Develop a Restorable Test Data Source
The capacity to do repetitive regression testing relies on the ability to organize test data in a repeatable manner. Most test automation solutions do not support the creation and management of test data, which is actually an essential part to include.
In addition, some people create the test data manually and manage it using spreadsheets which is a highly unreliable practice when you need to deal with masses of information. In simple words, such practices only lead to increased complexity.
Anyhow, in case of test data complexity, one should maintain the relationship and integrity between databases or data tables). Moreover, it would be best to choose the best test data management tools to handle things likewise, data aging and de-identification (data masking).
Monitor the Changes
Being the reliable service provider of regression testing services, you must closely monitor the changes because it plays a great role in testing. As we discussed above, regression testing aims to ensure that the existing functionality will work fine after making new changes to it.
Due to this process, you should monitor the changes in the requirements and also understand the impact of the app’s functionality.
Based on closely monitoring, you should modify the test cases in your regression suite, which means you can add new test cases, modify expected results, and delete the obsolete test cases to improve your regression testing process.
Keep an Eye on Problematic Areas
It is one of the crucial steps of effective regression testing that you should consider to identify problematic areas. As it is not necessarily that your application will have so many bugs because it entirely depends upon the build and the team that you hire for developing your application.
Thus, if the software contains fewer bugs, then you can easy to fix them.
Besides, they must know how to identify the bug reports and work on problematic areas. Similarly, they must have knowledge of understanding the user-reported issues that occurred when you neglect regression testing. Therefore, always focus on the key areas, prioritize testing to avoid risks, and have a clear picture of tricky integration points to enhance your testing.
Automate Regression Testing
The urge to deliver quality at a rapid pace followed by the increase of agile has allowed many teams to make a great transition from manual testing to automation.
Well, one can efficiently perform regression testing manually. Still, as software systems grow or change, there will be a higher number of test cases that will consume more time during manual implementation.
Nonetheless, as a reliable tester, you may need to conduct the testing in a repeated manner. Thus, you can use automated regression testing or automation tools to minimize a significant amount of work. Or, you can use a blend of manual and automation testing to produce better outcomes and remove bottlenecks.
To Conclude
Regression testing is a requirement, so you can’t consider it as an option because it helps find new defects that occur when you make any changes in a previously developed product.
- make the application/product bug-free
- maintain the product
- protect bug creeps from lack of communication and information
- save your time and money in the long run
- ensure robustness.
Thence, to improve the product’s quality and make it 100% defect-free, you must have a sturdy strategy to improve your testing process. If you want to perform the testing in the right way, you can consider our plan or a step-by-step approach that we have mentioned above to help you in the entire regression testing journey.
