Regression testing plays a critical role in ensuring application quality after every release. However, it is also true that regression testing is time consuming and very difficult to execute. Often, QA teams find it difficult to maintain high standards in regression testing due to time constraints and management pressure. If you’re someone wondering how to improve regression testing, this blog is for you.

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Here, we’ll discuss some of the common challenges that QA teams face when executing regression tests. We’ll also highlight proven practices that can make regression testing more effective and more efficient.

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Challenges of regression testing
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Short testing window: Often, quality assurance teams are not given much time to perform regression testing. The reason being, business people consider it as irrelevant since it requires testing of applications that have already been developed, tested and deployed at early stages.

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Availability of business users: Generally, business users are responsible for executing a regression suite. However, they are already overloaded with their usual chores and find it difficult to participate in it.

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Selecting regression suites: Understanding the scope of change and finding how much regression testing should be performed is still a challenging task. In complex ERP applications like Oracle EBS, Oracle Cloud, SAP, etc, the impact of change is vast. Often testing teams find it really difficult to prioritize test cases.

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Maintaining test scripts: Due to the dynamic nature of applications, the test scripts become fragile. Thus, testing teams need to put a lot of effort in maintaining those test scripts.

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Ways to improve regression testing
Automate, Automate, Automate!
If you want to complete regression test cycles within a short period of time, you need to automate regression testing. It has already been mentioned that regression testing is time consuming and due to its repetitive nature, humans usually get tired and bored. Automation speeds up the regression testing process so that a new feature or functionality can be rolled out without delay.

Base your testing on risk and criticality
Running too many test cases does not guarantee risk coverage all the time. You need to prioritize test cases based on the impacted areas. With AI-powered test automation tools like Opkey, you can easily find out the impacted areas and test them accordingly. AI based automation tools ensure that testers don’t need to test everything, rather the impacted areas to avoid waste of time and resources. Furthermore, incorporation of AI eliminates any guesswork. Read Opkey's high level guide to Oracle Cloud regression testing to know more.

No code test automation
To introduce automation, you should incorporate no code test automation tools. Since these tools don’t require coding skills to operate, business users can be involved easily in the testing process. As they are the ones who know business processes best, they can add new test cases for the regression testing so that new releases can be rolled out without any risk.

Don’t forget maintenance
As maintaining regression test suites is a daunting task, it is recommended that you should incorporate a test automation tool that comes packed with self-healing capabilities. This will alleviate the burden of business users as they don’t need to manually fix the regression test scripts.

Random Testing of User Scenarios
Set aside some time to test the application at random. You may also put yourself in the shoes of various users and try to represent real-world interactions between users and the system.

Learn more: Top 10 Regression Testing Best Practices