Top 10 Software Regression Testing Best Practices to Follow in 2023

What is Regression Testing and How to Use It

Before accessing the software regression testing best practices, let’s figure out what is it. In the world of software development, regressions are errors introduced by bug fixes, software updates, new features, or product code changes. It is necessary when introducing new features or enhancements into an existing code base or application. It ensures that new features and updates to existing applications work properly without bugs or defects. Developers and testers often struggle to keep track of each thread of code, leading to significant code compatibility issues. This allows you to run regression tests on your code base (or application) to find bugs early and reduce risk before shipping your application.

Software Regression Testing Best Practices

Regression testing strategy

It is vital to play a well-defined testing strategy, such as the test selection and test frequency.  Changes made to existing application code can cause regression issues. Therefore, the more code changes in a release, the greater the potential for regression impact. Development teams should be encouraged to release code changes to test environments frequently. 

 Test selection

As mentioned before, test selection is a critical part. Select a subset of tests from a regression test suite that covers the most important features and areas of your software application. Prioritize tests that are most likely to find potential bugs.

 Test environment

Create a stable and consistent test environment that mirrors your production environment as closely as possible. This includes using the same hardware, operating system, database, and network configuration to ensure the accuracy and reliability of test results.

Automated testing

Implement automated regression testing tools to increase testing efficiency and coverage. Automating repetitive test cases allows for faster execution, giving testers time to focus on more complex scenarios.

Version control

Use version control software to manage test cases and test scripts. This ensures that all changes and updates are tracked, so you can easily roll back to previous versions if something goes wrong.

Different types of testing

A regression test suite should contain tests of various test types, including Functional Testing, Unit Testing, and Manual Testing. 

Test data management

Properly manage your test data by creating realistic and representative datasets. This helps identify data-related issues during regression testing and ensures that the software works correctly with different types of data inputs.

Bug tracking

Establish a robust bug-tracking system to efficiently track and prioritize bugs identified during regression testing. It helps you manage the bug fix process, monitor bug fix progress, and ensure that identified issues are fixed before release. 

Software developer collaboration

Work with software developers to ensure that regression test suites are aligned with the software development process. This ensures that new changes are properly tested. 

QA in code reviews

Involving the QA team in code reviews is always beneficial. It doesn't require you to dig deep into the code, but it can be very helpful in understanding areas where the code has changed. In addition, it also helps determine ongoing updates.

This helps identify areas that may be affected by regression problems. 

Conclusion

That’s the top 10 software regression testing best practices. In today's rapidly evolving software development environment, ensuring application consistency and stability is critical to delivering quality products. However, effective regression testing practices for software development teams are often complex and time-consuming. To make your task easier to perform, you can select a dedicated software testing tool, WeTest, which can automatically and preciously detect errors in your software. It is one of the best approaches to save cost and energy in testing software.