6 Benefits of Automating Regression Testing

Regression testing automation simplifies iterations, creates unified standards across all projects, saves time, and delivers other benefits to testing teams.

A software product or application goes through many code changes during its development lifecycle (SDLC). This is the nature of the software world. New features and functionalities need to be added to software products on a regular basis. The challenge is that even a small tweak to the code can suddenly impact another part of the code. In many instances, the developer might find that the code change meant to add a new feature or fix a bug has influenced other parts of the app up to a point where one or several features don’t work properly. Testers leverage regression testing to ensure the overall stability and functionality of existing features after any code change.

Simply put, regression testing ensures that an application continues to behave in an expected manner even after many code changes have been made. Wikipedia states that regression testing can be used to ascertain that previously developed and tested software still performs the same way after it is changed or interfaced with other software. However, regression testing is a tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive process. While manual regression testing is possible for small codebases, it is hardly an efficient process. This is why most modern organizations are turning to test automation for their regression testing requirements. As regression testing is a highly repetitive task, it can be an ideal candidate for test automation. It can speed up testing while ensuring optimum quality. Test automation employs a series of pre-written test scripts which will be executed after a code change with little or no human supervision.

Why Automate Regression Testing?

“Convenience” is the leading reason why a growing number of software development organizations around the globe are opting to automate regression testing. The value delivered by regression testing to an app’s quality and performance is remarkable. It empowers testing teams with insights that could be easily ignored, improves the quality of deliverables, and allows the teams to be proactive during the project maintenance phase. However, regression tests require a lot of time to be executed in an adequate way. During a comprehensive regression testing session, a developer has to:

• Examine rigorously all aspects of the application
• Define how a code change may have triggered certain resulting behaviors
• Fix the root cause of the problem
• Reiterate application evaluation
• Monitor the project over an extended period

While these steps can be performed manually, they are repetitive and time-consuming. By automating regression tests, organizations can achieve several desired outcomes that enhance the team’s agility and product quality. Automation allows teams to run regression tests without engaging the entire team in running it. While setting up and executing automated scripts requires a high level of skills, this issue has also been resolved by exciting new test automation platforms enabling codeless test and process automation.

Benefits of Automating Regression Testing

Regression testing automation simplifies iterations, creates unified standards across all projects, saves time, and prevents the team from having to fix human error-based issues. Due to its overarching benefits, today there are very few QA teams that run regression tests manually. The traditional approach to regression testing is inefficient, highly expensive, and doesn’t match with the present-day requirements for speed and agility. The most prominent benefits of automating regression testing include:

#1: Frees up resource time

One of the greatest benefits of regression testing automation, or test automation in general, is that it liberates resources from performing mundane and repetitive tasks. Organizations can leverage test automation to check certain aspects of an application with better accuracy and with a rapid turnaround. Test automation also enables organizations to save time on other tests, bug fixes, and while conducting manual exploration into unusual test cases that might require validation. With test automation, organizations can strengthen their testing practice, ensure optimum release quality and deliver a better application to ensure a great user experience.

#2: Delivers Agility and immediate feedback

Most organizations today are leveraging the agile development approach to ensure a quick time to market. Regression testing automation complements the agile methodology. Automation delivers a simple way to test iteratively, create instant feedback for developers, and slashes the overall testing time considerably while improving quality. It decreases the chances of missing the hidden requirements by uncovering them early while testing. Test automation enables organizations to deliver the best user experience for the developed application.

#3: Enables Round-the-clock testing

With regression test automation, organizations can test constantly and round the clock. With its scheduling capability, test automation enables the scheduling of tests tests during night hours, ensuring that the development does not have to halt for test results. Organizations can utilize a capable test automation solution to schedule regression tests at specific intervals, such as daily or weekly, to ensure that all bugs are detected and addressed. Automation also liberates the test teams from mundane tasks and allows them to concentrate on business-critical and value-generating tasks, while all the regression tests keep running in the background.

#4: Increases coverage and enables scalability

Test automation empowers the QA team to test more. As a rule of thumb, the more teams can test better are the chances of identifying the bugs hidden to general eyes. However, when test teams have to perform manual, tedious tasks, they don’t get time sufficient time to test more. Such a loophole can lead to bugs going unnoticed during exploratory testing and test design. Such bugs can impact the end release quality. Test automation of regression testing allows the testing teams to carry out more tests and assess all the code changes more minutely. By delivering an increased number of sessions, test automation allows teams to examine an app across its every facet over an extended period of time. As a result, the coverage of test automation far exceeds the one provided by a team of manual testers. Additionally, test automation ensures that regression tests can run continuously at a high velocity and frequency, things that are not possible with manual testing. Thereby, test automation of regression allows organizations to scale testing, without having to spend on additional resources.

#5: Reduces maintenance hassles

Regression tests become essential when any new feature is added to an existing application. This causes the regression suite to grow. Eventually, the suite reaches a stage wherein it’s not feasible to manage the regression test cases manually. Consequently, organizations must select a test automation solution that provides a clear overview of the regression suite and enable the teams to manage it without the need for writing codes. A no-code test automation solution provides this benefit and reduces the maintenance burdens.

#6: Delivers Repeatability

Automation of regression tests is not a good-to-have rather a must-have option for modern-day development teams. Present-day applications are not built in a single effort, it undergoes multiple iterations to add more value for end-users. However, manual regression testing does not match this mindset. The manual process would be a nightmare for organizations as it would occupy the majority of their testing team. With automation, no workforce is needed to run continuous test iterations.

The market today is inundated with various solutions for automating regression test cases. However, organizations can get the most out of automated regression tests only by choosing the right solution. Ideally, organizations should choose an AI-powered and codeless test automation solution that can be easily incorporated into the existing test cycle to enhance the quality of application releases.

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BeatBlip is a simple, intelligent, robust, flexible, and extensible test automation solution that’s filled with powerful features to help organizations perform extensive and efficient regression testing without requiring heavy resources. The AI-powered and codeless test automation solution offers enhanced re-usability to cut down the automation effort, provides the test feedback both in file and text format, allows testers to test features and functionality as they are added, and doesn’t require any complex set up.

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