3 Ways to Apply Regression Testing in an Agile Environment

In-house teams and quality assurance testing businesses are facing more challenges than ever before in this day and age, when the majority of organizations are searching for ways to reduce the amount of time it takes to bring goods to market. Quality assurance experts are now confronted with the challenge of formulating a reliable plan for continuous testing that can keep up with the frequent upgrades in the product's system and the ever-shifting requirements. In Agile development, regression testing is what enables teams to concentrate on adding new features while also ensuring that the product's stability is maintained across all phases of the increment and update process. 

In the field of software engineering, there is no question that regression testing plays a significant role. In spite of this, there is a huge knowledge gap concerning the use of regression testing in an Agile setting while simultaneously providing actual value with each testing cycle.

3 Ways to Apply Regression Testing

1. Basic Concepts

Testing must be continuously improved in Agile Developers with each Sprint to ensure that earlier changes do not adversely influence the functionality already in place. Automation is the essential component that makes it possible to conduct high-quality regression testing. Testing for regression using manual methods might consume an excessive amount of time. Because this kind of testing needs consistent repetition, it is often a strong candidate for automation because of the sheer volume of work involved. How should an effective method for automated regression testing be developed? 

In order to construct a sound plan, it is essential to have a firm grasp on the fact that Agile project management and development entails ongoing transformations. Consequently, in order to get the most advantage from the process, each session of the regression test should adapt to the dynamic environment. It is prudent to construct the regression suite with an emphasis on high coverage, resilient test scenarios, and near-zero test maintenance in order to guarantee that it will continue to provide a high level of value in the future.

2. Things to Keep in Mind

The most significant advantage that automated regression testing in Agile has over human regression testing is that it enables quality assurance engineers to concentrate on testing many environments and integrating complicated situations. When developing a plan for automating your regression suite, there are a few aspects that you should keep in mind, including the following: 

• Don't try to get 100 percent coverage. It is quite challenging to attain complete coverage in the regression test. As a result, you should concentrate on covering around 70–90% of the manual exams. Make use of your manually created tests as a place of departure. 
• To ensure that your automated regression testing is as effective as possible, you should do it only after you have successfully completed at least one round of manual testing. Think about whether or not the use of automation is appropriate for the scope of your project. 
• As a general rule, automation is most useful when used to projects of medium and large size. In such case, there is a risk that the return on investment will not be adequate.

3. Best Practice & Tips

The results of automated regression testing may provide false positives on occasion because to outmoded test cases, timing difficulties, or poorly written tests. This might cause the results to be inconsistent (that is, to show a failure). Always make sure that your regression tests are up to date by giving them regular attention so that they can adapt to the ever-shifting environment. Differentiate comprehensive regression testing cycles from Sprint-level selected regression tests by basing the decision on your objectives, time periods, the scope of the testing, and the platform coverage of the testing. You should try to avoid obsolescence and make sure that you only preserve the test cases that are of the highest worth and importance. 

Final Words

The majority of the time, regression tests need to be performed entirely automatically. Therefore, you should make sure that your outfit does not contain anything that is difficult to scale or automate. Maintaining a procedure that allows for the potential of accommodating the required modifications to test code should be a priority while your Agile environment undergoes change. To determine the order of importance for the tasks, evaluate the test scenarios included inside the suites. It is essential that you have complete visibility to the reports generated by the regression suite in order to have the ability to measure and improve it.