Table of contents
- Introduction
- Understanding the Basics of Regression Testing
- Key Objectives of Regression Testing
- Common Challenges with Regression Testing
- Real Life Examples of Regression Testing
- How to Plan Good Regression Tests
- Techniques for Performing Regression Testing
- Tips for Maintaining High Software Quality
- Conclusion
How to Perform Regression Testing: Tips for Ensuring Software Quality
Introduction
In the fast paced era of software development, delivering best quality products with fewer bugs has become a very much needed requirement. Because software evolves—through new functionality, updates, or bug fixes—there is always a danger that something could break. This is where regression testing comes in. It helps in ensuring that the new updates do not accidentally cause any problems with other parts of the software that were previously working fine.
For beginners to software testing or those wanting to enhance their skills, there are numerous resources to tap into to learn more about the basics. Proleed Academy is one such resource, famous for its simplified and practical training on software testing.
In this blog we will walk you through the basics of regression testing, its importance, challenges, and practical techniques to ensure that your software remains reliable and free from bugs.
Understanding the Basics of Regression Testing
Regression testing is a software testing process which is used to ensure that new updates do not impact the other parts of the software and everything still works as expected.
For Example: Imagine you have updated your phone’s operating system. You would expect your favorite apps to work the same way, right? Regression testing follows the same concepts and validate all the important features of an app after an update to make sure nothing is broken.
Software changes with additional features, bug fixes, or improvements. Even small changes can affect how different parts of the software work together. Regression testing helps catch these issues before they reach to the end users of the software.
Key Objectives of Regression Testing
1. Catch New Bugs
When we alter or add something, there can be new issues that surface. Regression testing ensures we identify those bugs even before the users notice them.
2. Ensure Old Things Still Function
Even without laying hands on an old feature, a new tweak might inadvertently destroy it. Testing ensures everything still functions the same way as before.
3. Make Everything Stable
We need the app to be stable and not collapse after an update. Testing ensures it remains reliable to users.
4. Ensure It Works Everywhere
Apps must work on various phones, browsers, and operating systems. Regression testing ensures updates don’t disrupt that.
Common Challenges with Regression Testing (and How to Resolve Them)
1. Too Many Tests
Over time, your test list may grow extremely long, and it takes ages to run them.
Fix: Get rid of old or unused tests and retain those that truly matter the most.
2. Not Sure What to Test
It is sometimes difficult after making a change to know what to test. You don’t want to test too little or too much.
Fix: Test the areas related to the change—these are the likely ones to contain bugs.
3. Different Results on Different Devices
Occasionally a test works on one machine but not another. That’s disconcerting!
Fix: Test with tools that run in the same type of environment all the time to ensure results are consistent.
4. False Alarms or Missed Bugs
A test may report an issue where there is not one—or not even detect a legitimate bug.
Fix: Regularly update your tests and run them frequently to detect errors early.
Real Life Examples of Regression Testing
Example 1: Online Store
An online store introduces a slick new checkout function. Regression testing verifies that the search bar, product list, and order history still function properly—so customers don not get left hanging.
Example 2: Mobile App
A mobile app adds a new way to post to social media. Testing makes sure old things like logging in, getting notifications and sending messages still work on all devices.
How to Plan Good Regression Tests
1. Look at What Changed
Always look for what was updated in the software. That tells you where to look for bugs.
2. Test the Important Stuff First
Login, payments, or security are really important things. If they get broken, it’s a huge issue.
3. Use Automation if You Can
Make computers repeat test cases for you. It is time-saving and less error-prone compared to doing it manually.
4. Test Frequently
Wait for no update. Test continually to catch mistakes early before they become huge problems.
5. Test Your Test Coverage
Ensure your tests test all of the major features—and even a few unusual scenarios users may stumble into.
Techniques for Performing Regression Testing
1. Manual vs. Automated Testing
Manual Testing
Manual testing involves human testers, who apply test cases, interact with the software, and report defects or issues. It is also great for checking how things look and feel to a real user. Manual testing is helpful when the feature is new or needs creative testing.
Automated Testing
In Automated Testing tester uses automated specialized tools and scripts to repeat many tests, which are very hard to execute through manual testing. It is ideal for repeated tests such as login checks, forms, or payments. These tests save a lot of time once set up.
Popular tools: Selenium, Appium, JUnit, TestNG
2. Risk Based Testing
In this technique, you concentrate more on portions of the software which are most likely to break or that are absolutely critical to users. It allows you to spend time where it counts the most.
Example: Suppose you are testing a banking app, verifying the payment process is more crucial than testing how the user edits their profile picture, as payment flaws are critical.
3. Selective & Progressive Testing
Selective Testing
Rather than testing everything, you test only what is directly impacted by the new changes. This is useful when the update is minor, and you want rapid results without wasting time.
Progressive Testing
This refers to testing the new changes and the current parts simultaneously. It’s useful when a large update is done or when the new feature may impact older ones.
4. Unit & Integration Testing
Unit Testing
This tests whether one tiny aspect of the code, such as one function or feature, is working correctly. Programmers tend to do this immediately after altering something.
Example: When you alter a tax calculation, unit testing verifies that it still produces the correct answer.
Integration Testing
This tests whether separate parts of the system work fine when put together. It ensures that everything “communicates” with each other correctly.
Example: After updating the login system, test to see if it still connects with the user database.
5. Regression Test Suite Management
As time goes on, your test list can get really long. Without cleanup, it becomes hard to manage.
What to do
Run through your tests from time to time—remove ones that you no longer need because they’re no longer relevant, insert new ones for new features, and categorize tests by functionality (such as “Login” or “Checkout”) so you can quickly locate what you need.
6. Impact Analysis
This is all about determining what areas of the app will be impacted when something changes.
Example: If a developer makes changes to the user profile page, you also need to test the login system, account settings, and anything else that may be related. It prevents unexpected bugs in related features.
7. Exploratory Testing
This is a more improvisational form of testing, where you don’t have a script to execute. Instead, testers experiment with different things to find out what happens.
Why it's useful
It can reveal strange bugs nobody anticipated. This is an excellent technique when you need to test user experience or trap edge cases that standard tests may fail to catch.
8. Performance & Security Checks
Performance Testing
This ensures your app remains fast and slick even after changes. You test things such as page load times, how it behaves with many users simultaneously, and if the database remains speedy.
Security Testing
This ensures that changes do not leave gaps that hackers can exploit. You test things such as login security, password security, and input validation to prevent attacks such as SQL injection or XSS.
Tips for Maintaining High Software Quality
These applied principles can help you build resilient software, immune from defects, while your application grows and matures:
- Automate Large Items: Anytime you have reoccurring tests or tasks, automate them! This helps your team and prevents mistakes. Automation is a great fit for login authentication, forms, and basic functionality.
- Test All the Time: Don’t wait to wait for large releases. You should be testing every time you change something, and every time you put it into production. This help to discover the defect early on, and and fix the items before they become defects.
- Test Risk Magnitudes: Testing the all the area of your application you need to take extra caution when testing a high risk area. When you get to an area with, for example, payments, logins, and security inspectors bare extra caution, since if they break, it will be difficult and be a huge problem.
- Work with the Developers: Great testing is collaborative! Discuss with the developer on changes, areas it can break, and areas you can discover defect.
- Keep Improving: Testing is not something you can do and say, “That’s done!”. Have your test cases updated on a regular basis, learn from prior defects and find opportunities to make your testing increase in intelligence.
Conclusion
Regression testing is a critical part of software development. Regression testing helps to prevent new updates from breaking existing features, which greatly helps software stability and reliability. It can be a challenging endeavor but regression testing can be an effective way of providing software quality with the right strategies, tools, and planning.
So if you are an tester or professional tester, learning about these concepts will help improve your tests and give you high quality software.
