How does Regression Test ensure Better Functioning of Application?

Most enterprises nowadays make changes to the systems at regular intervals to make their software applications deliver richer user experience. The changes made to the system can be either functional or non-functional. For instance, a business may add new functionality to its software, upgrade to the latest version of a technology, modify the existing system configuration, or install security patches and updates. That is why; modern testers have to frequently deal with changes made to both functional and non-functional areas of a system.

Likewise, the QA professionals also need to ensure that the functionality and performance of the application remain intact despite changes made to the system. They perform regression tests to identify the new flaws or bugs created due to changes made to the system. They also need to conduct several tests again to assess the changes in the application’s behaviour and performance more accurately in the changed environment. Thus, regression testing ensures that the applications functions flawlessly despite the changes made to the system.

Understanding Important Benefits of Regression Testing

Ø  Often the changes made to the system or application results in new bugs or flaws. So the functionality and performance of an application is affected each time they system or application is modified. The QA professionals can easily identify the bugs and flaws generated due to these changes by conducting regression testing. The programmers can work on the flaws identified by the testers, and make the software application perform flawlessly despite the changes.

Ø  Whenever the operating environment of an application is modified, the modification has several side-effects. For instance, when a business switches from one operating system to another, the new operating environment will have a direct impact on the application’s functionality. Likewise, the functionality of the application will be impacted at the time of migrating to an upgraded version of the platform. The QA professionals can conduct regression tests repeatedly to identify and eliminate such side-effects.

Ø  Many QA professionals nowadays try to effectuate integration testing through regression tests. Instead on performing integration testing in a conventional way, they prefer running regression tests to assess the performance of the application more accurately. They simply run regression tests after all modules or components of the software are integrated to ensure that the application runs flawlessly in the specific environment.

Ø  The enterprises frequently add new features and functionality to their applications to enhance their popularity and profitability. Each time a new feature is added to the software or some bug in fixed by developers, the code base changes. There are always chances that the changes made to the code will have a negative impact on the application’s functionality. The QA professionals can perform regression testing to ensure that the application functions flawlessly despite changes made to the code.

Ø  In addition to assessing the functionality of the application after changes are made to the system, regression testing also helps QA professionals to track the quality of the output. For instance, regression testing of a compiler can be conducted to assess the size of the code base or determine the amount of time required for executing test suites. The testers can further execute the test cases repeatedly to ensure that the code base is easy to manage and maintain.

As enterprises frequently make changes to their systems, regression testing becomes repetitive and continuous. So a business can always consider automating its regression testing efforts to get accurate test results within a shorter amount of time. The regression testing tools will make it easier for testers to execute existing test suites quickly, and create new test cases easily according to the changes made to the system.