Software products undergo through n number of changes in their life cycle. When the Software or its environment gets changed, regression testing becomes essential.

1. How to Make Your Regression Testing More
Effective

2. 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.
Let’s have a quick look at the definition of regression
testing.

3. 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.”

4. 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.

5. 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 product’s
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. Let’s have a look at the common
and well known challenges of regression testing, listed below:

6. Knowledge of Existing Application
Assume a scenario in which new testers join the team, as the workload
increases. The new team member’s 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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, it’s always better to keep rotating your workforce and give
different testers the task of performing regression

10. Want more insights about Regression Testing?
Visit BugRaptors, a CMMi5 accredited quality assurance
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testing techniques.