Content 1. An overview of various regression testing types 2. When should businesses take up regression testing? 3. What is the significance of regression testing in agile? 4. What is the significance of regression testing in DevOps? 5. Regression testing benefits overview 6. Benefits of automated regression testing 7. What is a regression testing strategy? 8. How to develop a solid regression testing strategy for your business? 9. Benefits for businesses by adopting an effective regression testing strategy 10. Conclusion

Today’s businesses need high-quality software to deliver a great customer experience. Businesses often make frequent changes to the software features/functionalities based on the user requirements to deliver desired software to the customers. Typically, due to these frequent code changes, unknowingly, the existing functionalities of the software might get affected, or new bugs might also crop up. Therefore, businesses should leverage end-to-end regression testing in both agile and DevOps adoptions to ensure the proper functioning of the software even after frequent code changes. Moreover, businesses should follow an effective regression testing strategy while adopting regression testing to deliver high-quality software to customers.

An overview of various regression testing types

When should businesses take up regression testing?

This testing type should be taken up when:

• Bug/error is fixed in the software.

• A new feature or functionality is introduced into the software.

• The existing system is integrated with a new module or component.

• Requirement changes are initiated.

• UI changes are made in the software.

What is the significance of regression testing in agile?

Agile methodology focuses on faster and iterative development, where the product is developed in sprints and features are rolled out in each cycle. Ideally, testing cycles are kept short for ensuring a proper balance between the sprint development and iterative testing cycles. In an agile environment, developers roll out features at a faster pace, and therefore it is necessary that regression testing should go hand in hand to deploy features.

In an agile environment, the developers develop new features or make any addition or improvement to the code, while simultaneously, on the other hand, the regression testing is done on all new and old features. This regression testing technique in an agile environment occurs in two ways: partial (iteration) and full (major) regression testing types. In partial regression testing, only the features developed during the iteration are tested, whereas, in the full or complete regression testing method, the entire software is tested before release. This black-box software testing method in an agile environment ensures better resolution of defects as the product is tested in sprints to ensure defect-free software.

What is the significance of regression testing in DevOps?

DevOps is an evolution of agile methodology and involves various stages, namely, Continuous Development, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Monitoring, and Continuous Feedback. DevOps ensures that software is built and tested continuously and defects are quickly fixed to ensure faster delivery of bug-free software.

In the DevOps environment, regression testing is done at each stage of the DevOps cycle and after every change. Whenever software changes are made, regression testing is performed to check the existing functionalities and new code changes to ensure the software works fine even after changes. In DevOps, a faster feedback loop helps with fixing the bugs at each stage before moving to the final production stage.

Thus, regression testing has great significance in the DevOps environment and ensures the delivery of robust and high-quality software even after frequent changes.

Regression testing benefits overview

Ensures stable product:

In today’s agile environment, regression testing is taken up in sprints, which helps testers ensure build stability. In the DevOps environment, the product features and functionalities are continuously tested after every change, ensuring the software’s stability.

Enables quicker resolution of defects:

Regression software testing in agile and DevOps environments helps identify and resolve bugs earlier, enhancing the product quality.

Enhances the User Experience (UX):

Faster bug resolution and better test coverage ensured by regression testing in agile and DevOps make the product stable, ultimately enhancing the UX.

Reduces re-work and frees up testers:

Automating regression tests in agile and DevOps frees up testers and saves manual re-work. It saves a lot of time for testers, and they can be used for other critical activities.

Benefits of automated regression testing

As businesses leverage regression testing in both agile and DevOps, it is critical to adopt and follow an effective regression testing strategy to achieve significant results.

What is a regression testing strategy?

A regression testing strategy is the action plan or an outline of steps that need to be followed to ensure the successful testing of software. The regression testing strategy includes details about test objectives, testing time, resources, methods, testing environment, how to make regression testing part of the vision, details about the release process, checkpoints, definitions, process of automated testing, RACI, recommended tools, and more. However, to prepare an effective regression testing strategy, careful planning and the right selection of software testing techniques are required to ensure the regression testing process moves in the right direction to deliver significant results.

How to develop a solid regression testing strategy for your business?

Identify the need for regression testing:

The first step is to identify the need for software regression testing. Ideally, as soon as the change takes place in software, the regression testing method should be taken up. The primary motive of this testing process is to check the existing functionalities of the software with the help of regression test scripts.

Start with smoke and sanity testing:

Even before starting the regression testing process, it is essential to perform smoke and sanity testing to save the tester’s time and effort. In the smoke and sanity testing, the basic and core features of the software are quickly tested to ensure it works fine. It helps testers know whether the build is stable or not and helps decide whether to push it for further testing processes.

Define entry and exit criteria:

Before starting the test, it is essential to define the entry and exit criteria. The entry and exit points should be such that the test objectives are synced with test requirements. Thus, defining the entry and exit points smoothens the testing process.

Prepare and prioritize test cases for critical testing scenarios:

Testers should identify the problematic areas in the software and the areas that need to be tested first. Moreover, testers should first prepare and prioritize test cases around problematic areas.

Automate regression testing:

Testers should identify the test cases that can be automated to achieve a successful regression testing cycle. By automating the regression tests, the software can be tested with tools. Test automation ensures better test coverage, early bug detection, faster releases, and saves testers time and effort.

Maintain a repository of the regression test suite:

Testers should maintain a repository of the regression test suite. As soon as any changes in the software are made, testers should create respective test cases and add those test cases to the repository. It is also necessary to remove obsolete test cases from the repository.

Gather feedback from stakeholders:

Once the test strategy is prepared, it should be shared with all stakeholders, including development teams. Also, feedback from stakeholders and team members should be taken regularly to make changes in the regression testing strategy as and when needed to ensure significant results.

Other factors to be considered for a solid regression testing strategy

• Make the automated regression testing pack part of the DevOps CI/CD.

• Plan for scheduling daily/ frequent automated runs.

• Consider ROI on manual efforts and cost involved.

• Define critical success factors of test automation.

• Track and measure the Metrics.

Benefits for businesses by adopting an effective regression testing strategy

Identifies and rectifies bugs:

Whenever any change is introduced in the software, there are probable chances of new bugs getting introduced or old bugs getting reintroduced into the software. An effective regression testing process backed by a solid testing strategy is required to identify and rectify the bugs arising in software after frequent code changes.

Reduces testing time and cost:

An effective regression testing strategy ensures that the tests get completed in the minimum possible time so that businesses reach the market early. An efficient testing process ensures that the old bugs do not show up again and thus saves the cost involved in fixing bugs.

Channelizes testing team efforts:

A robust testing strategy clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of testers, avoids confusion, and ensures QA teams stay motivated and are up-to-date with the testing information. It ensures that the testing efforts of the teams are channelized in a proper direction so that effective testing results are obtained.

Manages testing complexity easily:

The regression testing process usually gets large and complex with time. A solid regression testing strategy defines managing and handling the complex regression test suites more efficiently and seamlessly.

Ensures optimum utilization of resources and testing tools:

A proper regression testing strategy involves careful planning to ensure that the teams know their roles and responsibilities well ahead. Proper regression testing tools and resources can be planned to get maximum benefits.

Conclusion:

Today’s businesses operate in a highly volatile market driven by ever-changing customer requirements. To satisfy the customers, businesses make every possible way to make their software more attractive and user-friendly. As businesses continue to make changes in their software, they should follow solid regression testing strategies and processes to ensure high-quality, defect-free software. Thus, businesses should leverage regression testing service from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider for achieving their desired high-quality software.

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Content 1. When should Regression Testing be taken up? 2. What are the Various Types of Regression Testing? 3. Significance of Regression Testing in Agile 4. Benefits with Regression Testing taken up in Agile Environments 5. Regression Testing challenges faced by agile team 6. Best Practices to follow for Regression Testing in Agile 7. Conclusion

When should Regression Testing be taken up?

Regression testing should be taken up on a new build when there has been a significant change in the original functionality even with a single bug fix. It is usually performed after verification of changes or when new functionality is added and should be repeatedly tested with every new function. In most conditions, it can be considered as a retest of tests and this testing method should be taken up in various situations such as

– When product enhancements are done

– When new patches added

– When small changes in the software configuration are made

– When code is modified due to an added new feature

– When changes are made to existing functionality or any patch fix

– When new integration takes place with other products

– When code changes are made for a performance upgrade

Specifically, all these above instances should be regression tested to ensure all functionalities remain unaffected even with new changes.

Under agile and DevOps practices, regression testing plays a critical role as continuous testing is the key to these methodology’s success to maintain product stability. Testers continue to follow shift-left testing to ensure effective testing to be done along with development.

Moreover, teams use regression testing to ensure the tested functionality continues to remain the same even when new functionality features are all developed within sprints.

Now, let us now try to know about various types of regression testing such as unit, partial, complete, and build-level regression testing types which have been detailed below.

What are the Various Types of Regression Testing?

Unit regression testing:

This is an important type of regression testing that should be taken up during the initial unit testing phase which tests the code as a single unit. This form of regression testing has a narrow approach and is focused on individual units of code.

Partial regression testing:

This form of regression testing is performed to check problems when making slight changes to the code. This testing process ensures to make the system work properly even after adding new code or when even slight code changes are made.

Complete regression testing:

It is a comprehensive regression testing method that involves testing the changed units as well as any old features of the application. It is commonly taken up to test when more than one code change has been done. This testing has to be performed before any major release or product delivery to ensure all functionalities continue to work seamlessly.

Build-level regression testing:

This method of regression testing at build-level corresponds to testing during the second build of upcoming release and is usually taken up when some code changes are done across the builds.

Significance of Regression Testing in Agile

Agile methodology revolves around fast and iterative processes with sprint cycles which are short and churn out features for each cycle. Specifically, the testing cycles should also be short to keep up proper balance between the sprint development and the iterative testing cycles that follow them.

Basically, the agile development is fast and dynamic and developers churn features in quick times. It is necessary that the testing cycles should also go hand-in-hand to deploy the new features after testing them.

In a true sense, development is done on one feature and essentially the testing has to be done on all new and old features that were developed earlier. It is a priority and necessity that with every new build, the regression testing has to be taken up to make sure that the new addition or improvement in the code does not compromise the functionality of existing features.

Thus, the regression testing has its own significance and this testing process ensures functionalities remain unaffected for every build. This regression testing process is critical for product’s success as it ensures all functionalities work in accordance with the given requirements in an agile environment.

Benefits with Regression Testing taken up in Agile Environments

– Helps to build a stable product as testing is taken up in sprints in agile environment to check whether the newly developed or existing functionalities are working as per the requirements

– Identifies any functionality issues early in the product development life cycle and ensures quicker resolution of these defects

– Automating regression testing in agile processes helps to reduce re-work and frees up the testers to be used for other important testing activities

– Effective regression testing embedded in agile practice helps to improve the overall quality of the product along with ensuring great user experience

Moreover, in agile scenarios with iterative changes, there are more frequent build cycles and continuous changes are added to the application. Therefore, in order to test these frequent changes, software regression testing should be taken up in agile practices.

Thus, for successful regression testing in agile, the QA teams should follow best regression testing practices and build effective regression testing suite from the onset of software product development to ensure all functionalities work effectively.

Regression Testing challenges faced by agile team

1. Too many changes:

During the software development process, there will be instances where the management and customers will ask for changes in line with requirements. These changes can prove to be unstable, due to which the efficiency of the test automation strategy can be dampened.

2. Time-consuming:

Testing large applications consumes a lot of time. To create and maintain a regression test suite requires a lot of time too.

3. Unable to manage regression tests:

With each sprint, the scale of regression tests increases. In the case of large projects, it is really difficult to manage regression tests. In order to manage regression tests properly, testing teams should automate and review tests on a continual basis. Ineffective tests must also be removed in the process.

4. Poor communication:

There should be an effective communication channel and proper strategic communication taking place between the testing team, developers, business analysts and business stakeholders. This will ensure that the regression testing process is streamlined. Through effective communication, specific features that have to undergo regression testing can be correctly ascertained.

5. Maintenance is a time-consuming process:

It takes quite a bit of time to maintain and update the regression testing suite. Time is consumed when new test cases are included or the existing ones are updated.

Best Practices to follow for Regression Testing in Agile

1. Define effective regression test strategy:

It is of utmost importance in an agile process to define an efficient test strategy for regression testing<.

In order to get effective regression test strategy, it should include

– Gathering all test cases

– Identifying the improvements that can be made for the test cases

– Estimating the time required for execution of these test cases

– Outlining of which of them can be automated and which ones to be manually tested

This sort of elaborate development of regression test strategy ensures effective testing results.

2. Conduct smoke and sanity tests:

It is necessary to conduct smoke and sanity tests before regression testing is actually conducted, as it saves time for testing teams. Sanity tests ensures a run-through of the basic functionality of an application and smoke tests are used to test the start or initial workflows such as login and startup pages. These two initial tests can be used to primarily categorize if the application is too flawed or working fine, and then the actual process of regression testing can be taken up.

3. Leverage test automation:

As every release cycle needs to include regression testing to ensure new developments do not break any other existing functions, it is ideal to adopt test automation to save time and efforts of testers. Effectively, if a parallel run of automated regression testing is performed, then the process can enormously save time and improve the software quality.

Automated regression testing makes the testing process much more efficient as running the same tests over an over again by manual testers is tedious. Automation can free up resources and this automation process can be used to reduce tedious and repetitive tasks.

4. Maintain and update regression packs regularly:

Essentially, a regression pack is a collection of test cases that are executed with new software update for every feature. This regression pack consists of test cases that have been written and drafted using the requirement specifications document. It is necessary to update these test cases with changes in features or with inclusion of new changes and it is also essential to maintain these test cases to ensure effective test results.

5. Adopt complete regression testing:

A comprehensive regression testing is essential and should be carried out and it should cover all the critical conditions. This sort of final regression testing should be taken up to certify that the functionality has not been altered and affected due to new code changes. This testing proves gives a green signal by the testers to move the code to production.

6. Perform continuous testing:

In Agile methodology, continuous testing is the backbone to ensure quality software. The process states to ‘Fail fast’ and ‘fail often’ through continuous testing, such that defects are fixed fast by the developers. These defects are fixed before delivery with minimum impact on software. Moreover, continuous integration and continuous delivery in agile & DevOps practices requires continuous testing with automated regression testing.

Hence, even for any developed software that requires some changes or modifications with passage of time and need, the updates are rolled out in a way that it is essential for the QA team to make sure that all the features are working flawlessly. In order to achieve this functionality stability for every feature, regression testing needs to be adopted.

Conclusion

Today’s businesses need quality software that is bound to deliver great customer experience and at the same time they need shorter release cycles. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure high-quality products that effectively meet the customer expectations which is achieved by leveraging software testing right from the stage of product development. Adopting effective regression testing in agile and DevOps practices ensures to deliver quality products to the market on time as all features are tested end-to-end to ensure quality product.

TestingXperts expertise with respect to Regression testing revolves around a spectrum of regression testing services that includes:

– Software Regression Testing

– System Integration Regression Testing

– Functional Regression Testing

– Automated Regression Testing

– End-to-End Regression Testing

Our cost-effective regression testing model helps QA teams to deliver a reasonable balance between test selection and fault detection. Leverage our next-gen regression testing services to ensure quality products as regression test automation by our test automation experts ensures to save time, effort and also ensures significant cost reduction. Talk to our experts today

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Adoption of agile methodologies and best practices indicate that the organizations are constantly challenging themselves to get services and products to market faster. Automation testing is just one way to accelerate your project delivery and in doing so building up a regression pack of test scripts that can be run with minute effort in the shortest amount of time. The three greatest benefits brought together by test automation are reduction in time, usage of resources effectively and efficiently, and increasing the test coverage.

Automation Testing

Test automation significantly shortens the testing lifecycle and increases the speed of the testing process.  Automating your test scripts allows you to save a huge amount of time instead of just running them manually. Automated tests can be easily built once you have the primary tests in place, which means that the testers can add tests into the regression pack and build a greater test coverage quickly. This implies that every industry at this time or in future will need help on all aspects of Automation Testing. Let us understand how test automation as a service is bringing value to the organizations.

Role of Testers Redefined

The role of testers has been transformed with the arrival of the concept of Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery. This concept has been evolved from the arduous Manual Testing process to fast and recurrent Test Automation. Automation has been highly responsible for the transforming and evolving role of a tester. In an Agile environment, when testers and developers have to collaborate, the overall culture of the teams change, testing gets quicker, and releases get more frequent. Automation cannot work without an effective testing strategy. The role of a tester will progress in an automated testing environment.

Clear focus on Quality of Testing

As quality is kept at the forefront these days, there is an increasing need for automation to ensure quality. This is a shared responsibility of the development team and the testing team. Automation can create a huge difference in redefining software development at every stage of the cycle. Furthermore, organizational strategies will be changed, and there will be evident structural changes to accommodate quality within their systems. Quicker delivery will be the main objective, but only automation can help in achieving speed with quality.

Quicker Feedback

Speed has become the prerequisite across various industries. Automation can, in all possible ways, help give instant and rapid feedback to the team, which also cuts down the delays and lays focus on improvement. Automation adds value by speeding up the arduous and tedious testing activity that is required for making sure that you achieve the desired result. In a certain way, automation in testing makes the activity more and more perceptible and assessable for considering the ensuing activities.

In Conclusion

Automation testing is the sure-shot method, bringing desired value to the organizations and helping them bring agility with quality. The need for automation testing cannot die in the future but only provide the desired outcome with well-aligned and dedicated teams that are able to work on projects and scripts.

TestingXperts is a automation testing company provides qa automation testing service with its extensive experience and an intelligent Test Automation Framework ‘Tx-Automate’. Connect with us to leverage our QA Automation Testing services.

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In a world where everyone is running at a breakneck speed, the slow-motion era of conventional testing will just not hold ground, any more. Step into the power of Continuous Testing and be a sharp enterprise.

Contents 1. Continuous testing and Devops World 2. Enters Dev, Shakes Ops 3. Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops 4. Shift to continuous testing

Continuous testing and Devops World

Before we knew it, the rise of an app-economy, fierce consumerization of technology, the arrival of digital natives and penetration of new technological marvels in everyday lives have strongly changed the way products and services are expected, consumed and forgotten. It’s a strange new-world where a company must be digitally-nimble and be there for a customer – every time and at any time.

Now in this app-stirred world, isn’t it fascinating that the rate of churn of new software is so fast today that to test it effectively in itself has become an onerous and slippery task? At the same time, can we ignore that in 2016, software failures have culminated into losses as huge as $1.1 trillion?

Let’s face it.

1. Always-on Users: Today’s customers are born into technology and there’s no weaning them away from the 24/7 and always-available services they have gotten used to. Enterprises and CTOs may find this problem a new beast altogether, since the digitally-born rivals are miles ahead in serving customers with jaw-dropping speed and an absolutely-robust grip on the pulse of the new-age customer.

2. Time to rethink the Status-Quo: There is no way that snail-paced, Luddite and bureaucracy-driven methods of building and testing apps can survive in this blistering world where apps come and go before you blink an eye.

How can you ensure that while your developers are trying to tune in to this new race, you also manage to have your QA and testing team ensure that the apps and offerings you put on your customer’s plate are not only dished out fast, but they also get a thumbs-up on quality and utility?

It’s a dilemma-dotted scenario where apps have to be continuously built, deployed, tested and released, but at the same time, IT can leave no room for any mistakes when it comes to defects, risks and usability issues.

Enters Dev, Shakes Ops

DevOps and the rise of Micro-services have prodded the Dev professionals into always being on their toes. However, the Ops side had to come and rub their shoulders too, without slugging behind.

That has engendered a very relevant and clever genre of testing, making businesses and testers re-imagine everything they took granted so far.

Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops

1. It allows the software delivery pipeline to gather feedback that is immediate, continuous and actionable; and helps the business to be pre-emptive with risks around a software release.

2. One can sync in QA testing with Dev and Ops processes in an optimized, proactive and seamless way and hence put a tick-box on both business and development goals.

3. Now Dev sprints can find Ops and QA folks running side by side and both can ensure adequate quality, proper and effective coverage for frequent builds of the modern-day app-economies.

4. Since the onset of Agile development methodology and the app-economy era that came close on its heels, enterprises have been struggling to make sure QA is not miles behind the nimble and super-fast Dev processes that are almost status-quo now. With Continuous Testing, one can pull in a systematic approach, sturdy process improvement, and integration of QA into skate-board-strapped Dev and Ops processes; but, also be relaxed regarding the continuity that is fundamental and critical for faster development cycles.

5. Think of a new paradigm of automated tests. More organizations can now be seen embracing automated acceptance tests too. During the commit stage, these tests are being deployed and the range spans from functional to non-functional criteria while guarding against regression and ensuring overall business value as expected by the customer. These tests may spot errors that may be beyond the grip of unit and component tests as well. Interestingly, these acceptance tests are customer-facing unlike unit tests that are usually developer-facing. That’s a quantum leap for enterprises today that are fighting the relentless challenge of being relevant for digitally-savvy and always-on customers.

6. The context of a production-like environment is another highlight of these kinds of tests. Smart use of a risk-based testing approach will be a major accelerator for many enterprises here. With such tools and an evolved state of automation, enterprises can be assured of continuity in testing, and at the same time, confident about precise risk-assessment and mitigation insights that pour in at the right time to the right person.

7. Core automation is passé but in a continuous testing, adequate risk-based impact analysis comes to the forefront. Nowadays experts in the field are also offering a layered approach that entails test implementation layer and application driver layer. This helps the code to cover interaction with application to perform actions and test results. So much so that any small change in an application’s source code, configuration, environment or data can spur a new instance in the pipeline altogether.

Let’s remind ourselves that in this agile-app, fast-economy and tech-fuelled world, the age of monolithic and flabby software testing is over. Now is the time for the lean and the mean to jump in. Innovation and agility are no more longer in SDLC today, and conventional software testing cannot furnish the visibility, responsiveness, scope and endurance that the new age demands.

A shift to Continuous Testing is a no-brainer if you want to keep your customers happy with services run from robust, dependable, maintainable and automated suites as integral and easy parts of the lifecycle.

The certainty of providing the best user experience – one high on comfort and still free of defects needs a mindset switch – Test early, test faster, test often and test continuously.

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