Regression Testing Definitive Guide: Best Practices, Strategy & Errors

1.What's Regression Testing and why is it so important?
2.Planning for regression testing, including test cases, frequency, and other considerations
3.How do you keep your product's delivery date from becoming delayed while yet managing regression risks?
4.How can you ensure that with the use of Regression Testing, your program or application is free of bugs?
5.Analyzing the Distinctive Features of Automated Regression Testing and Functional Testing
6.Which Tools Should You Use for Software Regression Testing?
7.Multiple framework-building strategies for regression testing
8.Various Types of Tests that can be performed in regression testing
9.Best Tips on how to optimize your regression testing procedure
10.Wrong decisions often made during regression testing

Regression testing involves repeatedly evaluating an upgraded web app, software program, or system's existing functionalities as we went through Regression Testing Challenges and Best Practices in a previous post. Testers use it to verify an app's live and new features operate properly. Under regression testing, the quality analyst evaluates current features' functional and non-functional aspects for defects and mistakes.
When new features are added to a system, it's important to run all of the current test cases again to make sure they're still valid and won't cause any incompatibilities down the road.

1.What's Regression Testing and why is it so important?

Software testers do regression tests to ensure that new features have not broken anything in the old version of the program. As soon as a developer implements new features or resolves an existing bug, the tester will begin regression testing. Since several pieces of code rely on one another, modifying or updating one may often have unintended consequences on another.
After making modifications to the software application, it's important to do regression tests to see how the software handles the changes.

Tests the enhancement's features.
Locates bugs with the app's current features.
It's useful for finding errors and defects with recently deployed code.
It checks to ensure that the update won't break anything within the application.

2.Planning for regression testing, including test cases, frequency, and other considerations:

How frequently developers update the program, the scope of the new change, and which preexisting features it may break all influence the approach used during regression testing.
You may improve your regression testing by using the following practices that have already been proved effective:

Outlining the test cases and scenarios to identify which should be automated and manually tested is essential when adopting automation testing.
All feasible test cases and affected features must be included in the regression testing strategy.
Determine the likelihood that the update will have an impact on the application by measuring or adjusting the magnitude of the upgrade.
Consider the scope, complexity, and significance of your company or project when doing a risk analysis.
When automating regression testing, give thought to the procedure, tools, and people involved.

3.How do you keep your product's delivery date from becoming delayed while yet managing regression risks?

Regression testing presents risks that may have a major effect on the release timetable of the product. How to Reduce the Potential for Regression:

Methods of mitigating risks should be used to reduce the severity of potential adverse events. Backing up your data is one way to reduce the likelihood of permanent data loss caused by a security breach.
Before beginning regression testing, it is important to proactively identify and analyze potential risks associated with a regressive change. Then, you'll be able to direct your energy where it will do the most good.
If you find any regression concerns, please let the people who will be affected know so that they can include them into the release planning process.
Manage the potential for regression by adopting a methodical strategy, such as the use of a risk registry or a risk management plan. This will increase the likelihood that all potential dangers will be identified and monitored.

The software development process is not complete without regression testing, but they may be expensive and time-consuming. A high level of coverage may be achieved at a lower cost and in less time by automating regression tests. You should think about the following before determining whether or not to automate your regression tests:

A look at the available tools: It takes a large initial commitment of time and money to implement automated regression testing. Regression test automation may not be feasible for a low-budget project.

Coverage requirements: Well-designed automated regression tests may give extensive coverage. On the other hand, human testing may be required to complement automated tests and reach 100% coverage.

Frequency of the updates: when updates are made often to an application, automated regression testing may be a time-saver.

The nature of the app being tested: not all apps can benefit from automated regression testing. When an app's UI is very intricate, for instance, it might be difficult to automate UI-based testing.

4.How can you ensure that with the use of Regression Testing, your program or application is free of bugs?

Regression testing, in general, consists of three phases:

Set up the infrastructure for manual and automated testing by gathering and organizing test data, test cases, test scripts, and other relevant materials.

Determine which functional changes resulted from updates or upgrades to the application's current modules: Before beginning regression testing, you must first determine which parts of the program will be modified by the updates.

Make good use of both human and automated testing: Once the affected features have been identified, you may utilize manual and automated tests to ensure the modifications or upgrades did not break anything.

SignUp/Login, search, filter and checkout are some of the most frequently used features that should be tested for regressions. Some techniques for finding these regressions include comparing actual and anticipated outcomes from the application, running functional tests, and adopting Test Management systems like TestQuality.

5.Analyzing the Distinctive Features of Automated Regression Testing and Functional Testing

Separate but complimentary methods for software quality assurance are functional testing and regression testing. Regression testing is concerned with ensuring that previously-tested functionality remains unchanged after code changes have been made, in contrast to functional testing, which focuses on confirming the accuracy of particular aspects. Both methods must be used to guarantee that the final product will satisfy customers and be safe to use in production settings.

Automated regression testing ensures that changes to code do not disrupt previously working features, and is thus an essential aspect of any continuous integration or delivery pipeline. As long as a battery of automated tests is performed against each version, developers may spot and correct regressions well in advance of going live.

6.Which Tools Should You Use for Software Regression Testing?

There are several popular regression testing tools out there, but some stand out. There are pros and cons to each method, so it's important to choose the one that best fits your requirements.

TestQuality Cycles: Cycles in TestQuality are groups of tests and folders that you wish to run repeatedly; for example, you could want to define a certain environment or tester. Cycles are a component of your test plan and are used to accomplish a specific testing objective.
TestQuality's Cycles, saves time by managing groups of tests or by adding configurations to a Cycle.

TestQuality's Cycles

In this TestQuality video we will cover How Cycles feature Tool Works and How to add Test to a Cycle or update the configurations to a Cycle and even How to Log an existing Defect within a Test Cycle.

Find the following time stamps within the video:

TestQuality Cycles offers a very simple way to run a group of Tests that you want to run repitedly.

JUnit: Popular among Java developers, JUnit is an open-source framework for creating and running unit tests. It may also be used for regression testing, with testers developing test cases to put an application through its paces. With its user-friendliness and support for a wide range of development tools, JUnit is a great choice for regression testing.

Selenium WebDriver: The open-source technology Selenium WebDriver is widely used for re-testing existing web applications. It's useful for automating testing of online and mobile apps. It's compatible with a wide range of browsers and Operating Systems, making it a flexible choice for regression testing. In a previous post we covered different types of Webdriver exceptions to consider when using this automation framework. Also, there are some other interesting alternatives to Selenium to complete your automation testing.

Cucumber: In the realm of Behavior-Driven software development, Cucumber is a common tool (BDD). In order to do regression testing, testers may utilize it to create test scenarios that put an application's features to the test. Thanks to Gherkin language, which is Cucumber's accessible syntax, it's simple to create regression tests that are understood by both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Watir: is a tool for regression testing of web applications. Testers can use it to automate tests against web applications using the Ruby programming language. Watir integrates with various development tools, making it a good option for regression testing.

Appium: This framework is designed to test mobile apps for bugs. It's a tool used to automate testing for both online and hybrid mobile apps. Appium's compatibility with several mobile OSes makes it a flexible regression testing solution.

Sahi Pro: is a regression testing tool for web applications. Testers can use it to automate tests against web applications using the Sahi script language. Sahi Pro integrates with various development tools and supports a wide range of browsers and operating systems, making it a good option for regression testing.

TestNG: As an alternative to JUnit, the widely-used TestNG is a useful open-source testing framework. Also, it's well-integrated with a wide range of development tools and allows regression testing.

7.Multiple framework-building strategies for regression testing

Automated regression testing requires the testing team to concurrently create the test automation framework. Testers may provide the automated test cases with a clear structure by designing the test automation framework. In this way, a well-defined architecture is crucial to automated testing:

Regression test plans that use test cases and test suites are the most effective and practical.
A framework that can be easily modified to accommodate additional test cases and is sufficient for running regression tests.
A Quality Assurance specialist and the instrument of their choosing for automated testing.
The integration work is done ahead of time by quality assurance testing specialists so that they may devote all of their attention to executing the script for regression testing after the framework has been developed.

8.Various Types of Tests that can be performed in regression testing

You may use a regression testing framework to perform a variety of tests, including:

Start by running just the tests that might be impacted by the code change, then expand the test set until you've found all the regressions.
Apply a regression testing strategy in which test cases are performed in order of importance, with more important ones being tested before less important ones. (You may set priorities for test cases depending on whether you're verifying the current application version or an upgraded/subsequent version of the program.)
By combining the previous mentioned two methods, we may do hybrid test selection, in which we perform regression testing on a subset of the test suite depending on their relative importance.
After making code changes, it is important to rerun existing test cases and compare the results to the original outputs.

9.Best Tips on how to optimize your regression testing procedure

Regression testing relies on a test case file that is kept up-to-date with new cases.

Determine which features or parts of your program are most vulnerable after the latest updates or alterations.

After each successful compilation of the new code, run the regression tests.

Produce exhaustive case studies of the regression testing you want to do.

Develop a routine process for doing regression tests often.

To do regression testing, carry out the intended action and check whether or not the actual answer matches the anticipated one.

Integrate functional and non-functional testing with regression testing.

Make sure the modifications or upgrades haven't broken anything by running manual and automated tests to detect any regressions that may have been introduced.

Regression testing is most effective when focused on the areas most affected by the modifications or upgrades made to existing modules of the program.

Think about the potential threats to the application's business model as you develop your strategy for regression testing.

To make sure you and your team take the required measures to test any changes effectively, it's important to establish a methodology for regression testing and make sure everyone participating in the project is aware of it.

You should include automated regression testing to your continuous integration or delivery pipeline to make sure that updates to your code aren't breaking anything and that any problems can be found and resolved as soon as possible.

10.Wrong decisions often made during regression testing

There are certain frequent pitfalls that developers may avoid if they take more attention. Some common mistakes are listed here.

Failure to define and adhere to a regression testing framework results in the execution of ad hoc test cases and suites on any automation tool, which wastes resources and prevents bugs from being found.

Having no clear destination in mind and preventing team members from seeing the forest for the trees.

One should never fail to run regression tests following a code release/change or issue patch.

Choosing not to use automated testing instead of doing things by hand.

Regression testing is expensive and time-consuming since it requires re-running the same test cases after an upgrade to make sure the software still works properly.

These are the most typical errors by test experts during regression testing. TestQuality test management can help you to organize your tests within your test strategy, which helps you avoid these pitfalls.

TestQuality helps you build better software with fully integrated and easy to use Test Management for high-performance teams. The fastest way to build, run, and manage test cases, plans, runs, and cycles. Easily understand the quality and performance of your tests and with powerful test analytics.

Add TestQuality to your workflow today

TestQuality can simplify test case creation and organization, it offers a very competitive price but it is free when used with GitHub free repositories providing Rich and flexible reporting that can help you to visualize and understand where you and your dev or QA Team are at in your project's quality lifecycle. But also look for analytics that can help identify the quality and effectiveness of your test cases and testing efforts to ensure you're building and executing the most effective tests for your efforts.

Regression Testing: A Definitive Guide