As technology is advancing, the software gets subjected to various new and improved features. Such integrations may cause errors/bugs in the system not allowing it to function accurately. Hence, regression testing is conducted to test the entire software to understand its behavior upon the addition of new integrations and identify any bugs arising due to the same. This is true for even minor code changes or any alterations made across the process. Simply put, regression testing ensures that the software or the piece of code that was previously developed and tested still behaves in the same way after the code has been changed or altered.

Carrying out regression testing manually can be a tedious task, and due to its mundane and repetitive nature, manual regressions may not be fruitful. Hence, regression testing is automated to ensure consistency and accuracy while avoiding human errors.

Significance of Automated Regression Testing

Incorporating manual regression testing can be a draining experience as it involves a lot of time and effort. Further, its tedious nature is prone to causing high errors. With the ever-changing technology, the process is getting complex and manually handling regressions cannot be considered a feasible option. Including automated testing as a part of the product development strategy is what most organizations are doing today.

Automation testing yields the best outcomes with optimal time and resource requirements. It focuses on conducting accurate regression to create products of higher quality, which in turn will offer a seamless customer experience. It streamlines the process, improves workflow efficiency, delivers the effective solution, and speeds up turnaround time.

Benefits of implementing automated regression testing:

Saves Time and Effort: Automated regression testing can handle repetitive tasks effortlessly and efficiently in lesser time, hence, saving significantly on time, cost, and effort.

Reliability: Automating regression testing will reduce human errors considerably while ensuring accuracy and consistency on the outcome. Their accurate and consistent nature makes the process reliable compared to manual regressions.

Tests running round the clock: One of the major advantages of automating regressions is that tests can be initiated and executed any time, i.e., tests running 24/7 and results being generated constantly.

Cost-effective: The reusable nature of test cases significantly reduces the cost of test case generation, making the whole process cost-effective.

Improved ROI: Automating regressions may seem to be a little more expensive than including expenses for buying tools, initial setup costs, and investing in writing test cases. However, this maybe a one-time investment; it yields good results in the long run adding to improve ROI metrics.

Early detection of bugs: Testers will be able to spot problems and defects earlier in the software development cycle thanks to automation.

Steps involved in Automated Regression Testing

Choosing the suitable test cases

Choosing which tests to re-run for regression testing is a combination of technology awareness, clarity on requirements, and intuition. Whether you’re performing priority testing or subset testing, the goal is to increase the likelihood of triggering any regression that has been introduced. Choosing the right test case from the repository is the most critical step that determines the success/failure of the testing process. Choosing the right test case is an indication that half work is done successfully, the rest remain in executing it with the right tools.

Regression test execution

Before the advent of autonomous testing, ensuring that your tests are effectively scripted is a prerequisite for good regression testing. If a test requires the system to be in a specific state, try sequencing tests to reduce the number of times you must change the state. Make sure your test suite produces data that is straightforward to understand. It should be simple to figure out which cases were unsuccessful and what the system was up to at the time. Occasionally, you’ll see apparent failures resulting from incorrect configurations.

Maintaining regression tests

Like any other tool, automated regression testing is only as good as the people who use it. And, like any suitable instrument, it needs to be cared for and maintained. When new test cases are produced, consider whether they should be included in the regression tests. “Does this bug need to be added to the regression testing?” you should ask yourself whenever you patch an actual bug in your code. In most circumstances, the response will be “Yes.” You should, however, include tests that check the functionality of any new code paths.

Why Is Automated Regression Testing Right for Your Project?

Organisations build software applications to provide value to the customers. With time, these applications need change, or the developer may look to add more functionalities and features to the software based on the customer requirements. With each change in code or functionalities, the app becomes more and more complex. Hence tests for regression issues should be added more frequently with every update. Automated regression testing could be a boon for such organisations.

Here are some of the reasons why automated regression testing could be suitable for your project:

• get higher test coverage
• get continuous results
• higher test efficiency
• fast results
• reusability of tests

Yethi for Automated Regression Testing Solutions

Yethi is the market leader in offering software QA solutions to global banks and financial institutions. Yethi’s test automation platform, Tenjin, is capable of handling efficient regression testing for complex banking and financial system. It has proven to offer nearly 100% accuracy in regression scenarios, and its half-a-million test case repository cuts immensely on the cost.

Tenjin is a 5^th generation test automation platform with robotic UI capabilities which can automatically learn and relearn without manual intervention. It offers high test coverage and has the ability to test even the complex banking/financial system with utmost ease.