Most organizations nowadays are seeking ways to reduce their application time to market. This makes it essential to create an effective continuous testing approach to keep up with shifting needs and quick application updates. Agile regression testing enables development teams to focus on new functionality while keeping stability throughout all phases of application upgrades and enhancements.
Regression testing surely plays a significant role in building applications. Regression testing is used by teams to ensure that tested applications continue to function after every change. However, there is still a huge lack of understanding on implementing regression testing in an agile environment while adding real benefits during each testing cycle.
In this article, we’ll focus on talking about continuous regression testing strategies in an agile setting. It is best to start with basic information to understand the topic, such as what regression testing is, the basics of regression testing in agile, why it is essential to regression testing in agile, and some advice that can help agile teams achieve the fast turnaround time and quality they are aiming for.
Regression Testing
Every time a new build is made, there is a chance that recently written code could interfere with previously written code, breaking current features or functionality. Therefore all of the existing features of the application must also be tested.
Applications that are frequently updated are very vulnerable to errors whenever the code is being updated or modified. New features shouldn’t compromise the user experience; they should enhance it. Regression testing is therefore essential to identifying application failure before release.
Regression testing determines whether new code interferes with or hinders existing features. With every build, it makes sure that new code improves, or at the very least does not change, existing code. Regression test cases are numerous, and manually repeating tests of a codebase that is becoming more and more tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, These tests are typically automated since they need a lot of repetition and are thus an appropriate fit for automation in general.
Regression testing should focus on lowering the number of test cases by examining the effects of newly added features on the entire application to shorten the time required. To accomplish this, choose the test cases that will affect the affected area and run the high-priority test cases in those test cases. Regression testing’s success depends on the regression test cases chosen for execution, which in turn depends on how crucial the component or module is.
Regression Testing in an Agile Environment: Basic Concept
Application testing has become more frequent as a result of rising user needs for agile development. With each release, the testers must ensure that the application as a whole is operating as intended and that the new code has no negative effects on the functionalities that are already in use.
Regression testing involves running the current test cases to ensure that the application is functioning properly and that the new modifications have no negative effects on its current functionality. Regression testing must be planned for and put up in keeping with agile principles and practices to achieve this.
Agile development is all about speed. It is an iterative strategy with a priority on providing users with quick value. As testing must change with each sprint in Agile due to the rapid build cycles and numerous changes, testers must make sure that previous changes do not influence the application’s current functioning.
Regression testing in an agile setting, therefore, seems reasonable and logical. The testing team can assess the updated code and functionality and determine whether the application’s performance has not degraded. Agile regression testing is successful when the test is implemented early in the application development process and updated after each sprint. That suggests that one of its most important functions within the development process is played by the agile regression testing approach.
Why is Regression Testing Important in an Agile Environment?
Regression testing is a critical step in the current agile approach. Every application development company strives to stay one step ahead of the competition in the world of highly competitive markets by creating significantly more advanced applications.
Agile complex application development demands quality and testing effectiveness to guarantee that any code changes do not affect current functionalities. Agile forces ongoing application improvement during the testing cycle through the use of regression testing.
It is difficult to overstate the value of regression testing in agile development. It can be challenging to anticipate every possible risk when using an agile framework because the team concentrates on adding new features in certain areas. Regression testing is then carried out to show the system’s components that have been impacted by the changes.
Regression testing ensures increased test coverage by completing test cases for every single feature, which enhances the application as a whole. This testing is a real lifesaver because it helps find flaws and repair them before going on to the next stage of the development process. Agile regression testing is essential to producing high-quality applications that function without problems.
Agile regression testing provides everyone involved with a clear picture of the delivered application after the code changes have been implemented. Agile regression testing makes sure that no issues have been added to the application as a result of the code modifications.
For such reasons, it is not surprising that the idea of including regression testing as a crucial step in the development lifecycle would emerge.
Method of Regression Testing
Regression testing may be done in three different methods. Depending on the situation, the size of the code base, the number of testers on the team, and the resources available, a different testing strategy will be used.
Retest All- This regression testing technique implies rerunning every regression test that has already been run on the updated codebase. This will identify regressions if the tests were well thought out. However, doing so is expensive because it takes more time and resources.
Selective re-testing – In this technique, individual regression tests are chosen for execution rather than the whole regression test suite. Test cases are divided into two categories: Reusable and Obsolete test cases.
Prioritized test cases for re-testing- This is used on extensive codebases. Making regression testing effective and quick requires giving the regression test cases a priority ranking and carrying out the most important ones during the allotted period. The top-priority tests cover user activities, code paths, and functional areas where defects are expected to exist. The remaining tests can be finished by testers after these tests have run.
Developing a Continuous Testing Strategy for Regression Testing
It’s critical to deploy applications that have been thoroughly tested as well as tested for regressions to give a flawless user experience. Continuous repetition is required for regression testing. Regression testing must be a part of every release cycle to make sure that no functionality has been broken by new advancements. Regressions do not always result from routine bug patches or new features. They may also be the result of updated databases, newer browser versions, or other environmental changes. Regression may potentially cause issues with performance or security.
Even when new features are added to the application every sprint, regression testing is implemented in Agile to help maintain the overall stability and quality of the application as requested by the users. When done correctly, regression testing in Agile minimizes the amount of programming needed to fix applications that might not function as intended as a result of insufficient testing.
Before the start of the development phase itself, the testing team can develop a test strategy and adjust it with each subsequent sprint cycle to execute regression tests smoothly in an agile setting. Therefore when developing a plan for regression testing, take into account the following.
Employing the Smoke and Sanity Test
They are carried out before regression tests and can help testing teams save time. Before the extra testing of a new release, sanity testing is the process of running high-priority tests to ensure the application functions as intended.
Smoke testing requires a selection of test cases that can be executed fast and test the primary and core application workflows, such as startup and login.
Executing sanity tests and smoke tests make it easier to determine right away whether an application has become defective to require any additional testing, such as regression testing. This is far preferable to starting to look into why hundreds or thousands of regression tests are failing than running regression tests on applications that don’t load or enable login.
Smoke and sanity testing can be the initial step in developing a strategy for regression testing.
Identifying Error-Prone Areas
Include the test cases with the highest failure rates. Some parts of the application are so prone to errors that even a small coding change can cause them to malfunction. To include them in the regression test suite, maintain track of these failing test cases throughout the application development cycle.
Prioritizing Test Cases
Ensure that the process is in place so that it can be modified to suit test code changes as the agile environment changes. Prioritize work by evaluating the test cases inside the suites. Using a risk-based technique, a testing team chooses test cases that address the sections of the application that are most impacted by changes to the application. They also assign a priority level to important and frequently utilized functionalities.
High-risk test cases are important because they put the application’s general functionality in danger and could be seen by users. Testing with a medium level of risk including those that involve boundary value testing or tests with negative findings. Low-risk test cases can be incorporated into the final regression test because they are the least affected by alterations.
Prioritizing test cases can help minimize the number of regression tests required, reduce maintenance time, and enable more frequent and quicker execution of regression tests.
Automation Is Good but Manual Tests Are a Starting Point
Testing can be made easier for testers and performed more effectively by using automated regression testing that is agile-friendly. It allows QA engineers to concentrate on the development process rather than giving running tests extra attention.
Not to minimize the importance of automation testing, but it’s crucial to remember manual regression testing in agile development. The initial stages of development, when testers familiarize themselves with the application, adjust to workflow, etc., must be carried out manually.
If testers attempt to write automated regression tests against an unstable feature, they run the risk of losing time. Therefore, testers must first run and pass the test manually before performing automated regression testing. The results of the automatic test and the manual run can then be compared.
Plan Testing in a Collaborative Manner
This method is collaborative; by working together, the testing team covers tests at the sprint level. Everyone in the group is encouraged to follow any modifications to the requirements made during the iteration and to share their thoughts and recommendations on any features that might have a substantial impact on the application. Testers can prioritize their tests in this way without affecting the effectiveness of QA scripts.
Analyze In-Depth Bug Reports
It is essential that regression testing tools interface with error-tracking technologies. By offering an array of information on regression testing failures, these tools assist in locating the problem.
If the test fails, this aids in determining exactly what went wrong and identifying the line of code that was impacted. Screenshots and other metrics about regression testing failures can be collected using error tracking tools, assisting in the identification and debugging of the problem. Therefore, ensure that the reports are completely visible to be able to measure and improve them.
Opt for Automation
Automation is essential to accelerating regression tests for agile sprints. Make adjustments for each new feature after starting with an automated regression test script. As previously stated, early manual testing will be necessary for testers to analyze application flow, logic, UI modifications, etc.
It is ideal to incorporate automated regression tests when the application has gone through some significant modifications and has been developed to a certain amount.
Every time an application under development is changed, it is well-known that regression test suites must be updated. To streamline quality assurance, review it after each sprint, remove ineffective test cases, and add relevant ones.
With automated regression testing on LambdaTest, testers may plan their test executions to run frequently without manual intervention sequentially or in parallel and receive detailed findings of automated test executions across various device configurations all at once.
LambdaTest enables testers to have access to a cloud infrastructure that includes more than 3000 real devices, browsers, and operating system combinations. This makes it the ultimate end-to-end regression testing platform. It can run regression tests automatically following each modification to the code and provide timely feedback.
LambdaTest is a platform for evaluating cross-browser compatibility; it offers all of the necessary resources for speedy and effective automated regression testing on desktop and mobile platforms. Additionally, it offers CI/CD Integrations for regression testing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that agile application development has resulted in several benefits that have undeniably improved the process. Agile has been the most popular development model in the business world thanks to its ability to achieve quicker ROI and time to market, better utilize user feedback, and constant enhancements.
