How to Make Your Regression Testing More Effective

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How to Make Your Regression Testing More
Effective
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This article is all about briefly explaining the
regression testing and the scenarios in which
regression testing is applied. We will also see
how we can formulate an effective and efficient
regression testing strategy in order to overcome
those challenges. Lets have a quick look at the
definition of regression testing.
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Regression Testing The definition of regression
testing, according to ISTQB glossary Testing
of a previously tested program following
modification to ensure that defects have not been
introduced or uncovered in an unchanged area of
the software, as a result of the changes made in
the application. It is performed when the
software or its environment is changed.
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• When to perform Regression Testing?
• Regression testing is executed when any of the
  following situations occurs during software
  development lifecycle
• A bug is fixed.
• A change in requirements is implemented.
• A new business rule, feature or functionality is
  implemented.
• A new module, component or subsystem is developed
  and integrated to the existing modules or system.
•  

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Challenges of Regression Testing Regression
testing is easy to define and understand, but
confusing when it comes to perform regression
testing of a software product. One of the
reasons is the dynamic nature of software
products. Further to that more complexity gets
added as the products functionalities and
capabilities increase. Lastly, the quality
assurance team might also face time limitations
and pressure from the management when they are
testing the application for regression. So one
got to understand the challenges as well, before
you can design a counter strategy for the
challenges. Lets have a look at the common and
well known challenges of regression testing,
listed below
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Knowledge of Existing Application Assume a
scenario in which new testers join the team, as
the workload increases. The new team members
gets walkthrough of the product and gain
knowledge of the new modules, subsystems and
components assigned to them. This knowledge might
be sufficient for major functional testing, but
insufficient for the regression testing.
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Exorbitant for Business Also, Challenge
associated with the regression testing is the
portrayal of its value to business people.
Therefore, the management might be reluctant in
allocating the budget, time and resources to
execute the activity of regression testing.
Hence, the management can be annoyingly critical
and does demands justifications for every cycle
of regression testing.
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Less Time for Regression Testing When
testers are told to execute regression testing,
most often they are tempted to perform exhaustive
testing of the product. However, the quality
assurance team is not given much time to perform
regression testing. Therefore, it is wiser for
the quality assurance manager to make sure that
the testing team does not spent all energies on a
few modules missing out the testing of other
modules due to shortage of team.
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Rotate Your Workforce So the quality
manager should also take care of the motivation
level and interest of his team members. If you
ask the same tester to perform regression testing
every time, he may get perforated, disinterested
or develops a loop vision. As a result, he will
lose the motivation and the quality of testing
might drop which means defects could slip through
into live release. So, its always better to keep
rotating your workforce and give different
testers the task of performing regression
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Want more insights about Regression Testing?
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