Regression Testing: a Comprehensive Guide With Best Practices
Tags: regression, testing
Published: 2023-05-09 11:18:14


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In this era of agile and devops, software vendors roll out new features and functionalities on a weekly/ daily/ nightly basis. It necessitates regression testing as it validates that bug fixes or new features haven’t affected the existing functionality. Saying otherwise, it ensures that your mission critical enterprise applications continue to work as intended, thus reducing the risk of business disruption.

**What is Regression Testing**?

Regression testing is a software testing technique that verifies whether or not the changes in the codebase have impacted the existing functionality of an ERP system. Its main purpose is to ensure that bugs or issues introduced by recent changes are identified and fixed before the new release is rolled out to end users. Regression testing is an important step in the software development process, as it helps to maintain the quality of the software and improve its reliability.

**How Do Regression Testing**?

To perform regression testing:

- Identify areas of the ERP software that may be impacted by the changes.

- Select and prioritize a set of test cases to run based on the potential impact of the changes.

- Execute the selected test cases and compare the results to the expected outcomes.

- Report any deviations and work to resolve any issues found.

- Repeat the process as necessary to ensure all changes have been thoroughly tested.

Since ERP is a complex application, doing regression testing manually can be time-consuming and resource intensive, it is recommended that you should bring in test automation.

Automated regression testing can greatly aid in streamlining and standardizing the testing process.

**Top Benefits of Automated Regression Testing**:

Consistency and Accuracy: Since regression testing is repetitive in nature, doing it manually can be error-prone. By incorporating test automation tools like opkey, you greatly reduce the chances of human error. Saying otherwise, it will make the testing process more efficient, consistent and accurate.

**Time Savings**: By creating and running test cases manually, QA teams cannot keep up with the speed of development. For instance, Oracle rolls out quarterly updates, Salesforce thrice a year, SAP twice a year, and so on. Keeping up with these updates is no less than a nightmare for QA teams. With automation, QA teams can run more tests and at a faster pace. Furthermore, test automation will also free up business users for other important tasks.

**Cost Savings**: Automated regression testing can save money. Firstly, test execution is faster as compared to manual testing. Secondly, it also saves your money that would have been spent in fixing bugs that would leak into production due to inadequate coverage in manual testing.

**Increased Test Coverage**: Automation testing tools employ artificial intelligence that offers coverage based on the impacted areas. Furthermore, there’s no more coverage on the basis of guesswork. Thus, business continuity remains intact.

**Continuous Testing**: Automated tests can run continuously, ensuring that the software remains in a state of readiness. Moreover, due to continuous testing, defects can be identified and reported quickly, allowing developers to fix problems before they become critical.

**Enhanced Collaboration**: Since test automation tools come packed with robust reporting capabilities, it becomes easier to report and track a bug. This eventually fosters collaboration among teams and also ensures quick resolution of issues.

**Summing Up**

In order to keep pace with the speed of development, organizations need to invest in test automation. However, they need to understand that the involvement of business users is critical for successful regression testing. Thus, they should incorporate no code test automation platforms to support their testing efforts.