Best Ways To Apply Regression Testing In Agile Environment

Today, when most organizations are looking for solutions to decrease products’ time to market, in-house teams and QA testing businesses are challenged more than ever. QA specialists are facing the requirement to develop a solid approach for continuous testing that would keep up with changes in requirements and fast updates in the product’s system.

Regression testing in agile is what can help teams concentrate on new functionality and, at the same time, maintain stability at all steps of the product increment and updates. Without a doubt, regression testing in software engineering performs a large role.

Still, there is a significant gap in knowing how to implement regression testing in an agile environment, meanwhile giving real value through every testing cycle.

In this article, we are going to concentrate on the application of regression testing in agile software development, potential challenges, and tips that can help agile teams arrive at that high velocity and quality they are aiming for.

Understanding Regression Testing

Whenever developers obtain test reports, they apply the required fixes to the software. In the method of introducing any modifications to the system, new bugs can jump out of nowhere. That’s when regression testing comes into the game. If performed right, regression testing can help enhance the overall quality of the product.

With that being said, there are two important cases when regression testing is used:

After major defects were repaired and the product needs quality assurance to ensure there are no side-effects of applied changes;

When the code was updated due to the addition of a new characteristic, changes in requirements, or business flows.

That’s what applies to functional regression testing. Also, there is a word visual regression testing, which strives to assure that no side effects will pop after changes in software visual design. Visual regression testing is just as necessary because it helps you assure that the software looks just as good as it operates.

This is a brief summary of regression testing to help you understand the core idea behind it. To discover a more exhaustive definition of this type of testing, check out our comprehensive guide on what is regression testing and how it is performed.

Regression Testing In Agile Methodology: Basic Concepts

In agile teams, testing has to develop with each sprint to ensure that earlier modifications don’t affect the existing functionality.

The key to facilitating high-quality regression testing is automation. Manual regression testing can exercise too much time. Since this type of testing needs constant repetition, it is usually a good candidate for automation.

How to develop a great strategy for automated regression testing? To build a solid approach, it is important to understand that agile project management and development indicate constant changes. Therefore, to deliver the most benefit, all regression test sessions should adapt to the dynamic environment. To assure the continued high value of the regression suite, it is smart to develop it with a focus on high coverage, robust test situations, and near-zero test maintenance.

Regression Automation: Things To Keep In Mind

The biggest advantage of automation over manual regression testing in agile is that it allows QA engineers to concentrate on testing various environments and mixing complex cases. However, there are a few things to consider when creating a strategy for automating your regression suite:

• Don’t strive for 100% coverage: 100% coverage of the regression test is rather difficult to obtain. Thus, concentrate on covering about 70-90% of manual tests.
• Use your manual tests as a starting point: To make automated regression testing efficient, it is why implement it after you run manual tests at least once.
• Consider if automation is the appropriate solution for your project size: As a rule, automation is best suited to medium and large-scale projects. Otherwise, it may not bring a satisfactory return on investment.

Biggest Challenges Of Regression Automation

There are two major challenges your team should be aware of:

• False positives – sometimes, due to obsolete test cases, timing problems, or poorly designed tests, the outcomes of automated regression testing can be inconsistent (i.e. report crashes when there are no issues).
• Maintenance – agile projects are known to change immediately, which is why automation regression tests suites require to be managed continuously to reflect on all changes in the project and avoid obsolescence of test cases.

Regression Testing In Agile: Best Practices And Tips

Finally, examining all the information and aims of regression testing in software testing mentioned above, we can provide you a comprehensive list of tips to follow when adopting it in an agile environment:

• False positives – seldom, due to obsolete test cases, timing problems, or poorly designed tests, the outcomes of automated regression testing can be inconsistent (i.e. report failure) 
• Maintain your regression suites continuously to assure they keep up with the constantly changing environment.
• Select full regression testing cycles from sprint-level particular regression tests based on your purposes, time frames, scope, and platform coverage.
• Avoid obsolescence and assure you keep only those test cases that are of important value and priority.
• In most cases, regression suits should be 100% automated. Therefore, ensure you don’t incorporate in your suit what is difficult to scale or automate.
• Keep a process in place to have a chance to accommodate the required changes to test code as your agile environment changes.
• Estimate your test scenarios within the suites to prioritize tasks.
• Ensure you have full visibility of the reports from the regression suite to have the ability to measure and improve them.

Also Read: 7 Types Of Regression Testing Methods You Should Know

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