As of 2020, the top problems for firms that have pursued digitalization in the last two years are listed as skills gaps and cultural disparities resulting from digital transformation. Organizations must make additional adaptations to deal with the changes brought on by digital activities. Many stakeholders regard software development as a straightforward process of developing, testing, and deploying code. On the other hand, many developers know that seemingly slight code changes can have far-reaching consequences throughout an application. Only regression testing is capable enough to ensure that everything is working correctly. Minor changes to a piece of code can cascade throughout an application; therefore, regression tests are essential for ensuring that everything works in perfect order.

In 2019, many automation solutions that replace tedious but required chores will acquire even more traction, particularly in regression testing. This resulted in the automation of regression testing. These technologies produce high-quality outcomes while also providing the speed and efficiency that agile teams require for continuous testing and delivery. Before we dive into further discussion of the advantages and disadvantages, let us know -what is regression testing and why automation of regression testing is necessary.

WHAT IS REGRESSION TESTING?

Regression testing is used to see if new code breaks current functionality. The purpose is to catch any defects that may have been introduced by accident in a new build or release candidate before they reach production and to ensure that any previously corrected bugs do not return. These approaches can considerably reduce the amount of time spent squashing bugs and the number of issues that make it to production.

Regression testing entails rerunning test cases to confirm that functionalities continue to function. Unit tests that guarantee methods provide the correct results or functional tests that ensure the user process behaves as expected are examples of test scenarios. These tests can be run automatically as part of a build server or by quality assurance personnel manually. While regression testing was performed after the development team had completed their work, it became clear that flaws discovered after the fact were more expensive to resolve. Modern developers build unit test cases before developing any code in a test-driven development approach, while quality assurance teams focus on high-level functional tests to verify that everything works together. As you already assumed, repetitive testing might tire the tester. We tend to automate regression testing. However, regression testing is challenging. Here we will discuss a few potholes of regression testing and some practices that will help you as a tester or professional.

CHALLENGES

While running a regression test, we face a few intriguing challenges and obstacles regarding its time, cost, complexity, and maintenance. Some such hurdles are as follows:

• Time and Cost: Running regression tests on already passed tests can be challenging to justify to stakeholders and tedious for quality assurance engineers. It is difficult to explain the time it takes to write and run tests, and the high cost of test-related services and infrastructure, especially if you don’t see the benefit.
• Maintenance & Complexity: Over a lengthy development project, regression tests will inevitably grow in size and complexity. The number of test cases, and the functions and processes that need examination, might quickly number in the thousands, making manual testing impracticable for quality assurance engineers.
• Brittle Tests: Regression testing is needed to detect bugs before a production build, but nothing is more aggravating than a test suite that consistently produces false positives — or tests that fail when they should pass. False-positive tests are inconvenient for stakeholders, developers, and test engineers, and they may cause everyone to question the method.

PRACTISES TO KEEP IN MIND

Regression tests can be challenging to write and manage, especially with limited resources, but there are several best practices to follow to keep things running smoothly and avoid the problems that might derail the development process.

Below is the list of some best practices you might follow :

• Automate Regression Testing: When you automate regression testing, it saves your time and money in the long run. If manual quality assurance testers are compelled constantly to rerun the same tests, they will become bored and demotivated. Repeating the same chores and steps is frustrating to the tester. The automation of regression testing makes it easier in layman’s language.
• Focus Your Attention: Rather than trying to test everything at once, concentrate on the most common use cases for the software application. “User sign-ups”,”sign-ins”, and “purchases” may be the best places to start(considered example).
• Pruning the Pack: Regression testing is time-consuming and consumes resources; any tests that check if outdated features function or cover defunct versions of the product need to be removed. Only test the things that matter.
• Using The Results/Insights: Regression testing is as necessary as the test engineers and developers that write them. Create simple means for developers to convert regressions into tickets and reporting systems to keep stakeholders aware.

WHY CHOOSE HEADSPIN?

You need an intelligent approach to produce aggregation and regression insights at the speed and scale necessary in today’s digital economy.

Customer happiness suffers due to poor application performance, as does brand dilution. It is critical to conduct rigorous regression testing of mobile and web apps to uncover and resolve performance, functionality, and localization issues before they are released. Regression Intelligence from HeadSpin is a helpful tool for comparing degradation across new app builds, OS releases, feature additions, and locations.

The AI-powered Regression Intelligence from HeadSpin works with your CI/CD workflows to automatically discover degradation issues in every build of your app.

You can analyze user experience KPIs across real devices in over a hundred global locations with HeadSpin’s Regression Intelligence to uncover network, API, cloud, or edge-based issues.

CONCLUSION

Regression testing is an important component of the software development process, but they come with many obstacles. You can overcome these obstacles by using Headspin and other technologies to make regression testing faster, more accurate, and more cost-effective, allowing you to reap the full benefits of Agile development.