Manual Regression Testing Doesn’t Work… Without a Strategy!

Regression Testing Recap

Regression testing is checking software after updates or changes. Alterations to parts of an application may lead to shifts in its components. And when you don’t adapt a system to, say, new features, it won’t work. It’ll be like gluing a Lego block to the side of an existing structure instead of building it up to look consistent.

So, in short, you run regression tests to locate areas affected by a change and modify them to prevent issues.

With that in mind, do you need regression after every software addition or fix? Yes. But you might not need ample testing. For example, extensive regression is necessary after:

• Code or environmental changes.
• Emergency bug amendments.
• Security updates.
• Altered requirements, etc.

You’d also want to run regression tests before releases, during continuous integration, and after user-reported issues – each time something new pops up or as a preventive measure. Yet, you don’t always have to go all in with regression. For instance:

• You add a feature that lets consumers change the font color in a document. Here, you’d focus on verifying that it works as intended and doesn’t break other document editing functions.
• You update the “About Us” page on an e-commerce store. This is an isolated module that doesn’t directly interact with other critical functions. So, again, you assess the data introduced and closely related elements.
• You make a cosmetic change to a weather app. Since this has minimal impact on the underlying functionality, you don’t need extensive retests of all features.

To sum it up, you need regression testing after every modification, but you don’t need it to be all-encompassing each time. You just have to isolate the affected aspects, so to speak, and cover them without venturing into far-away modules.

A Comprehensive Guide to Manual Regression Testing

Why Manual Regression?

Regression testing is often the first one teams choose to automate. Why? Because these tests take place frequently, they’re reusable, and they can get quite complex. So, to speed up and improve the accuracy of the process, automation is a logical choice.

But manual regression has a few tricks up its sleeve:

1. It allows for greater flexibility. You can get creative and uncover nuanced issues that automated tests might miss.
2. It’s more cost-effective for smaller applications or projects with limited budgets.
3. It lets you perform exploratory testing. Adapting to changes and thinking critically gives an edge to rapidly evolving software.
4. It prompts you to focus on user experience, user interface, and usability.
5. It’s better suited for complex scenarios, edge cases, and usability issues that can be challenging to automate.

Automated testing comes with its own perks and pitfalls. It’s only a matter of deciding which works best for your project and implementing either properly. For instance, manual regression is better for:

• Early stages of testing when test cases are evolving.
• Rapidly developing software that is yet to achieve stability.
• Frequently changing test cases that are hard to automate.
• Exploratory testing to discover hidden defects.
• Small to medium-sized projects with relatively limited testing scopes.
• Usability-centric applications where user experience and interface design are critical.

As you can see, manual regression is a good decision for quite a few situations. It’ll be more cost-effective for smaller projects as well. Now, let’s get into the implementation details.

Step-by-Step Implementation

So, you have your wonderful project. You finished feature acceptance testing. And now you’re looking at your documentation – where should you start with regression?

Preparation Stage

First, know what you have.

Assess Your Resources

This stage is about understanding your capabilities and limitations. You need to account for available teams, budgets, and timelines and adapt your manual software testing to them. For instance:

• How many people will be involved in testing?
• What will each member handle?
• How much time are you ready to dedicate to regression?
• What testing environment will be used (operating systems, devices, browsers, etc.)?

Think how you’ll accommodate the regression and how much you’ll be able to handle. Discrepancies between your vision for regression and your actual capacity will only delay the process and discourage the team.

Understand Your Software

This isn’t pointing out the obvious. It’s about taking a step back to see the bigger picture. This includes understanding the app’s:

• Architecture.
• Modules.
• How different components interact.

For example, you could hold a cross-functional team meeting involving QA engineers, developers, and stakeholders. A team discussion will present insights that can help grasp project particularities and business priorities to guide your testing efforts.

Planning Stage

Now, determine your project’s specifics and align them with your manual regression testing strategy.

Decide What You Need at This Phase

Manual regression can be resource-intensive. Outline where and to what degree regression testing is needed. You should consider the project’s objectives and timelines. Let’s review a few situations where your approach to regression might shift.

• You can retest all functionality for a stable long-term project that hasn’t been checked in a while. This way, you’ll ensure that everything is indeed up and running. You’d want to do the same after a product overhaul that introduced major changes or if it’s the first regression for the software.
• You can focus on specific cases for areas that undergo frequent changes or when you have limited resources. Instead of investigating the entire product, you target critical functionality and components that are most likely to be impacted by recent alterations.
• You can prioritize test cases when you need to secure user-critical features and high-risk elements.

To elaborate on the third point, here are some tips to help you get started with organizing your regression test cases:

1. Begin by aligning your test cases with the core business requirements. You can concentrate your efforts on the aspects that directly impact the achievement of business goals.
2. Conduct a risk analysis to evaluate the likelihood and severity of defects in different areas. Prioritize test cases that focus on the high-risk areas of the application.
3. Rely on historical data to guide you. Analyze the outcomes of past tests to decide which ones should receive higher priority. For instance, you might want to identify cases that have had a greater impact on software quality and reliability in the past.
4. Start with test cases that comprehensively cover all critical business functions and the parts susceptible to regression.
5. Examine dependencies, including preconditions, postconditions, or data flow between test cases. Prioritize test cases with fewer dependencies, as they are easier to execute and maintain.

Prepare Documentation

Lack of proper documentation is often the number one challenge for teams starting with regression. Keep clean records so that everyone is on the same page. Create detailed test plans and cases that outline the test:

• Objectives.
• Steps.
• Expected results.

Document any special configurations, data requirements, and prerequisites, which you can also use as a reference for future testing phases.

Briefly, keep your documentation detailed and organized but don’t get crazy with it. You don’t want it becoming a bottleneck. For instance, in an agile, startup environment, documentation should strike a balance between providing guidance and not being a burden.

What Is Test Documentation and Why Do We Need It?

Prioritize Test Cases

When selecting regression tests, the rule of thumb is to pick those that cover critical features first. Why is test case prioritization a thing here? Because regression without a proper plan might:

• Take a long time to complete.
• Put a strain on the team.
• Divert the focus from important software elements.
• Lead to decreased testing accuracy, etc.

So, regression test case prioritization is about managing the resources you have to adequately cover the application. Here’s how you do it:

1. Understand the recent changes to locate affected areas.
2. Identify critical aspects to secure core features.
3. Prioritize based on risk to catch potential problems early.
4. Consider frequently used functionality to protect user-valued paths.
5. Analyze historical defect data to locate error-prone elements.
6. Review feedback from end-users and customer support to determine problematic features.
7. Focus on adhering to specific compliance or regulatory standards.
8. Adjust test case selection based on project constraints for a more targeted approach.

You can also use tools to help with this preparation stage, for instance:

• Automated code analysis tools identify code changes and areas affected by recent updates.
• Test impact analysis tools determine test cases directly related to code alterations.
• And if this is your very first round of regression, test case management programs are a must.

Create Your Regression Testing Plan

It is a document that outlines regression strategy and approach. It serves as detailed instructions for any testing activities that are about to take place. You can view it as a summary of all the preparations you’ve done so far. Here’s what you should include.

1. Test schedule and resources.
2. Testing objectives.
3. Testing scope.
4. Selected test cases.
5. Determined test environment.
6. Test data.
7. Testing techniques.
8. Entry and exit criteria.
9. Bug-tracking methods and tools.
10. Dependencies.
11. Risks and contingencies.
12. Communication plan.
13. Maintenance procedures.
14. Post-testing analysis processes.
15. Approval and sign-off from relevant stakeholders once regression testing is successfully completed.

A regression plan is your map for effective testing. It defines everything there is to know about what awaits the team and guides them during testing.

Execution Stage

After you’re done with regression testing, you need to work with bugs for a bit. Answer the following questions to organize them:

• How critical are they?
• Have they appeared before?
• How many new ones are there?

By prioritizing the errors you’ve found, you’ll be able to deal with them quicker. You might even decide to hold off fixing a few minor issues if the deadlines are tight. Also, with this bug data, you can even pre-plan your future testing and possible team modifications.

Next comes the bug verification round. Here, you verify that the issues were solved and haven’t introduced any new deviations.

Bug Severity vs Priority, or How to Manage Defect Fixing

Maintenance Stage

This last stage is not the “finishing touch.” It’s about continuous improvement.

Adjust the Strategy as Needed

Depending on the testing results, you might want to alter your strategy.

Let’s say you’re testing an e-commerce website. During regression, you discover a security issue that exposes customer credit card information. In response to this, your testing strategy should shift its focus to address the issue. And you might need to expand the regression testing to also cover other parts of the application with similar security concerns.

So, don’t get tunnel vision and focus on fixing bugs only. What you find during regression testing is a learning opportunity that can refine your project further. Report any defects you find in a systematic manner, including:

• Details of the issue.
• Steps to reproduce.
• The environment in which it occurred.

Gather Feedback

Feedback is a treasure trove for quality improvement. You could rely on it to enhance the testing process and, ultimately, the product. Encourage developers, QA specialists, and stakeholders to share their experiences, challenges, and suggestions. Not only will you increase team engagement, but you’ll also stock up on diverse insights that help drive the project forward.

You can also check in with user reviews to locate consumer pain points and decide what to prioritize in your next round of testing.

And What About Automating Regression Testing?

Well, automated software testing is always on the table. You just might not need it. We’ve already discussed when manual regression is enough and why it’s better sometimes. But, for bigger projects, automated testing is often the next step. For instance, consider some of the challenges that prompt companies to opt for automation:

• Manual software testing might take up a lot of time.
• It can be relatively expensive and effortful.Z
• Regression tests are repetitive.
• They’re also more demanding regarding documentation and maintenance.
• Human error is always a concern.

If you build a proper manual regression strategy and don’t come across many issues, why bother with automation? So, if manual regression works for you – great. And if you feel like your project could really benefit from automated tests, it may be worth going for it. But that’s a topic for another time.

How to Reach the Right Level of Automation?

To Sum Up

Every good thing in life comes after a lot of hard work. And each great product needs capable regression to secure value. A good manual regression strategy is about knowing what you can do with it and how to bring it to life. It takes considerable expertise. But it doesn’t mean that fresh projects won’t figure it out.

You only need to rely on competent insights, accept help, and cherish your mistakes. Then, you can create your best project yet.