Why Automate Software Regression Testing?

 

At the core of every digital transformation exercise is a software application, which, in consonance with the hardware, runs the system and achieves the desired objectives. However, the software application needs to be updated periodically to address the challenges of the day such as the advent of new technologies or changing customer preferences, among others. Software regression testing helps to identify and assess if the changes made to the software application have met their objectives and/or the changes have created a new issue. For example, a photo-sharing service decides to introduce video compatibility. However, when the new service/feature is implemented, the photo-sharing service takes a hit.

Regression testing is to find out such unintended change(s) and fix it before the software application is released to the customers. Thus, QA regression testing ensures the software application is updated to meet the market/technical/customer requirements and is free of any issues.

Scenarios to conduct software regression testing exercise

There can be scenarios or situations for the QA specialists to conduct regression testing to bring about stability to the software application. The below-mentioned test cases are some of the scenarios that necessitate the conduct of such testing:

·       Complex integration test cases

·       Functionalities to be frequently used by the users

·       Scenarios showing the working of a software application’s core features

·       Functionalities to have undergone some recent changes

·       Boundary value test cases

·       Samples of successful or failed test cases

Why regression testing in software testing be automated?

When changes are made to a software application prior to its release, regressions (resident glitches in a functionality or feature) can get triggered. These can negatively impact the release schedule of the software application and increase the development cost. However, there is one way to accelerate QA regression testing and meet the delivery turnaround time – automation. In fact, manually looking for the unintended changes in the application can be time-consuming and entails engaging the testers for extended periods of time. And since testing in such cases can be repeatable in nature, automated regression testing can reduce the time and effort of testing. Since regression testing checks the functioning of the existing features of a software application, it is important to have the maximum test coverage courtesy an automated regression testing strategy.

Factors to consider while deciding a regression testing strategy

QA specialists should consider the following factors while contemplating the decision to pursue automation in regression testing.

# Is test automation suitable for the project?

Test automation, including when used in regression testing, is not suitable for every project. For example, short-term and small projects such as developing small mobile apps, do not need automation to test regression as the time to write automated test scripts may exceed the total timeframe of the project. Hence, automation in regression testing should be for projects that are of large or medium scale, comprising several sub-systems such as enterprise applications and multi-user gaming software with many releases.

# When to write the automated test scripts?

It is not possible to write scripts for automated regression testing beforehand for the process depends on the manual test cases that have found bugs in the past consistently. Since such manual test cases are not available at the start, testers should proceed with automation when stable software modules are present.

# Which are the tests to be automated first?

Regression test scripts may be developed based on repeatable test cases wherein bugs were found consistently through manual testing. Such tests cover core functions and exceptions like boundary conditions or negative test cases impacting other functional areas of the application.

# Quantum of regression testing to be automated

For most software applications around 70-90% of manual test cases that have detected bugs consistently can be automated. The rest 30% are the manual cases that have detected bugs inconsistently or showed false outcomes.

Pitfalls to consider while conducting automation of software regression testing

Test automation experts should keep the following pitfalls in mind while devising an automated regression testing strategy:

·       Review and maintain regression test suites to ensure the efficiency, accuracy, and speed of testing

·       Do away with false positives generated by automated regression testing suites by verifying the results with a manual smoke test

·       The complexity of automating any regression testing process should not come in the way of its implementation

Conclusion

Since regression testing is crucial to ascertain the proper functioning of existing or old functionalities when changes are made to the application, it is crucial and should not be overlooked. Through automation, any regression testing company can maximize test coverage using a minimal number of test cases thereby saving time and cost significantly. 

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Debunking the Common Regression Testing Myths

With customer experience driving enterprises towards delivering better quality products, they are going the Agile-DevOps way. In this, any product or service needs to be continuously upgraded to meet the changing realities of the day. The realities may include the following:

·       Advent of new technologies that have the potential to increase efficiency, quality, and productivity

·       Changing customer preferences about products or specific features of any product

·       New and better quality products being brought to the table by the competitors

·       The products need to comply with the new security or industry guidelines

·       The products should be workable across devices, browsers, or operating systems, and their updates

Therefore, while in pursuit of Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI and CD) goals as required by Agile and DevOps, the product needs to be updated periodically. While this is a good practice, for it ensures the product remains trendy and technically superior, it can be challenging as well. The updates to one part of the software or the whole software can trigger unlikely changes. These changes can affect the smooth functioning of the software or introduce glitches. So, on one side, the software is updated in consonance with the market or customer demand, on the other, it fails to deliver the best customer experience. To pre-empt such a situation from developing, the QA team performs software regression testing.

What is regression testing?

It is a type of testing that ensures the functionality of an application is not affected by a fix or change made in that application. When a tested software undergoes a fix or update, which does not necessarily affect the whole software, the QA team does not test all the modules. Instead, only a few test cases are executed ensuring adequate test coverage. Any regression testing in software testing can be a fit for test automation due to the overwhelming number of repetitive tests to be conducted.

Benefits of regression testing

QA regression testing accrues a number of benefits for the QA team. These include

·       Ensuring any changes (enhancements or bug fixes) made to the application or a specific module of the application do not affect the tested code

·       Improving the overall quality of the product and making it trendy and customer friendly

·       Reducing the testing time as only a limited area of the software is tested

·       Identifying the bugs or glitches causing the issue and fixing them

·       Helping to implement a Continuous Integration (CI) setup. Here a build triggered by a code is tested automatically in the form of an automated regression testing

Debunking the common myths about regression testing

With time, some myths have gained credence in the minds of QA testers related to regression testing.

Limited testing of functionalities may not be a good idea: Here, instead of testing the already tested codes, only a specific area/feature/functionality of the software is tested. And since the entire software is not tested, the glitches triggered by the fixes or updates in one part of the application may not be identified. This is where the QA specialists need to be meticulous with their planning.

Automation is mandatory to plan any regression testing strategy: Since repeated testing of the already tested code (not the whole application) is done in such type of testing, automation is preferred to save time. However, this does not mean that manual testing can be completely replaced. It is helpful to get a human insight into testing, which automated testing may not always offer. Also, test automation requires proper maintenance of test scripts and test cases lest they deliver the wrong outcome. Further, in cases where quick fixes are needed, manual testing can do the necessary QA regression testing since test automation may take time to setup.

Regression testing lasts long: Any automated regression testing can check and recheck the codes, which no manual checking can accomplish in a reasonable period. Since the scope of testing is small, the testing need not take ages to complete.

Regression testing is not obligatory: This is often put forth by enterprises that give precedence to ‘faster time to market’. However, doing away with regression testing services can backfire as any quick fix to an already tested product can trigger changes elsewhere. And without identifying and fixing those changes (read inclusion of glitches or bugs,) the final product will not be of superior quality.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned myths, the need for regression testing has become mandatory given the frequent updates received by software applications. It helps QA specialists to do away with any unfavourable changes to the application and delivers the best possible user experience.

4 Best Practices for Automating your Regression Tests

To stay in the competition, enterprises need to deliver quality and user-friendly products or services on a consistent basis. While doing so in real-time, they ought to upgrade their deliverables with better features and functionalities possibly without altering the cost. As customer experience becomes the key differentiator for products to being adopted by their target customers, their quality becomes important. The quality needed is in terms of performance, scalability, security, and, to some extent, aesthetics as well. So, how to ensure the changes made to the applications do not end up impacting any other aspect of the same? The answer lies in conducting regression testing. In fact, given the business-critical need for the products to perform well, there has been an urgency to administer regression testing in software testing.

How does regression testing help enterprises?

Modern software applications are huge, cumbersome, and come with a lot of end-point interfaces with third-party applications. These make them vulnerable to the ingress of glitches when changes are introduced. Thus, determining the impact of any minor fix can be a challenge unless, of course, the software is put through automated regression testing. In this type of testing, the core functionality and performance are analyzed to uphold the application’s robustness. Further, regression testing validates performance of the application’s interdependencies.

Notwithstanding the criticality of regression testing in the build-test-deliver pipeline, it is often given short shrift by the powers-that-be. As per the management, retesting the already-tested features and functionalities in a software can be a wasteful, time-consuming, and costly exercise. Let us discuss some other challenges that can be added to this list containing ‘management reluctance’.

Challenges for regression testing services

The slew of challenges impacting the proper execution of regression testing comprises of the following:

Inadequacies of the waterfall way of testing: Enterprises are wont to follow the waterfall way of quality testing where siloed departments, especially QA, may not have the idea of any changes being made in the application. To address the lack of information, testers conduct the full suite of regression testing, often manually. This can take a toll on their time, cost, and effort. However, with the adoption of Agile and DevOps methodologies, everyone is aware of the changes. Hence, testers, instead of running the entire suite of testing, only test the impact of the specific change made in the application.

Costly and highly complex: As this type of testing entails retesting the already tested features and functionalities of an application, it is difficult to justify the cost. The cost can accrue towards allocating resources and tools. Further, since the updates to any software application can be a continuous process given the technology trends and changing customer preferences, the need for maintaining the test cases increases.

Choose appropriate test cases: To make the most of the time and resources allocated towards regression testing, testers should create and execute specific test cases.

Since regression testing in software testing can be a cumbersome and time-consuming activity, it should be automated. In other words, by automating the regression test suites, enterprises can free up resources and relieve them from the drudgery of performing repeated manual testing.

Best practices for automating regression testing

As regression testing for checking the functioning of various aspects of an application is repetitive, automation holds the key to make it quick, efficacious, and cost-effective. The best practices to follow are:

Choose the right test cases: Since running the test covering all aspects of an application through large test suites would belie the very rationale for automation, testers should choose test cases carefully. They should brainstorm as to the specific cases they need to validate rather than going about testing every aspect of an application. Importantly, test the interdependencies that feed the performance of various features and functionalities.

Choose the right tool: Automation testing needs the presence of proper tools that enable the writing of test scripts in any language the tester is comfortable with. The tools can be open-source or premium depending on the extent they can meet the testing objectives.

Train the testers: Even though automation in regression testing can supposedly relieve testers of the drudgery of conducting manual tests, they should have the expertise to write test scripts and run them. So, choose testers who are adept at writing test suits or train the ones who are not yet up the learning curve.

Study user personas: Usually, the features and functionalities that the core group of target users would like to use should be automated. This, when extrapolated, can cover most people’s browsing habits and ensure a superior browsing experience.

Conclusion

Regression testing is a critical requirement to ensure the seamless performance of an application. However, while automating the same, steps should be taken to cover specific aspects of the application that may have a large impact on the user experience.

The Inevitability of Regression Testing

When it is all about staying competitive and earning revenues, enterprises are going all out to develop new applications with better user experiences. With users becoming choosy, enterprises are constrained to offer features and functionalities that are different from their competitors. However, there is a catch when it comes to adding new features in an application - regression! Yes, the unintended consequence of any code change, which instead of enhancing the user experience can, at times, act as a bummer.

Let us understand the same with an example. You take your car to the mechanic to fix an issue with its heating function. But after receiving the car with its heating function fixed, you find another function, say its fog lights not working. This turns out to be an unintended consequence, which you never imagined would hit you from nowhere.

To make it further easier to understand, let us relate it to software. For example, an application adding a photo-sharing service ends up nixing its loading speed upon delivery. So, to ensure such unintended changes do not hamper the user experience, testers need to implement a robust regression testing strategy.

So, what is regression testing and why is it needed?

It is aimed at ensuring the seamless functioning of an application in-spite of any addition/modification to its feature(s). This is important as regression testing can identify issues and fix them arising out of any code change. It is different from retesting and ensures the entire application to work in accordance with the expectations post changes. In retesting, on the other hand, only the specific code change is tested for its expected outcome. Hence, any comprehensive software regression testing can be quite complex and time-consuming.

Checklist for regression testing in software testing

A change in one part can create an unintended change in another part of the software. And unless the entire software is monitored post introducing the change, the consequences can impact the software’s functionality and user experience. The below-mentioned scenarios or test cases can be fit cases for conducting software regression testing.

·         Functionalities to have undergone changes

·         Cases related to integration

·         Cases with boundary values

·         Functionalities most visible to the users

·         All core features

·         Scenarios facing frequent defects

Should regression testing be automated?

Since regression testing services are often iterative, they are good candidates for automation. The test cases for automated regression testing should be easy-to-maintain, stable, and frequently repeated. As this type of testing checks the quality of an existing functionality, it needs to be repeated for various parameters. Automated regression testing frees up testers and allows them to further explore the production environment for any unusual responses. Further, not all software regressions are a result of code change. For example, some may be the result of updates to databases or browser versions.

Challenges to regression testing

The quality of an existing functionality can be ensured with more automation. However, it also requires testers to maintain such test suites for their prolonged usage. So, the test suites need to be flexible to incorporate any future changes. Let us discuss some challenges associated with regression testing services.

·         Expensive: As the same function is tested repeatedly, there is no immediate ROI to speak of but mainly expenses.

·         Not adequate time for testing: Since a project needs to be completed in a timebound manner, it is not possible to let the iterative regression testing to continue for a longer duration. So, testers often execute critical regression tests only and skip others. This can leave a few quality issues to remain unchecked.

·         Maintenance and optimization: The automated test suites should be optimized and maintained to meet the rigors of any new testing requirement.

How to manage regression testing

Given the inevitability of such testing in preempting the ingress of any unintentional quality issues during a code change, the tests should be managed well. The steps to ensure the same are:

·         Executing smoke test and automation

·         Analyzing the test requirements

·         Preparing to deal with the impact of changes

·         Prioritizing tests

·         Choosing the right automation tools

·         Analyzing the final glitch report in detail

·         Optimizing and maintaining the test suites

·         Creating criteria for entry or exit of regression testing

·         Executing testing randomly

·         Keeping the testers motivated

Conclusion

The rapidly changing digital landscape owing to the addition of new features and versions of software applications, browsers, and operating systems requires businesses to set up a robust regression testing strategy. So, even though the testing per se is expensive and time-consuming, it should be taken to its logical conclusion.

This article is originally published on dev.to.