Software testing is the process of checking software for errors. It is not only crucial to the success of a product but also to the development process itself. However, it can be challenging for many people because software testing requires different skills and techniques than other areas of software development, such as coding or analysis. This article will cover how we approach software testing in context with our testing strategy and how we follow up on test results.
Do you ever wonder if retesting software is even necessary? I sure do! We all know that the cost of software development can be high. We don’t know how often we should retest our code to ensure it still works. Well, this article will explain the concept of retesting in software testing and will provide a few reasons why testing your code after every release may not be such a bad idea.
What is Retesting?
Retesting is the overall process of testing something (in this case, software) again to ensure that everything is working as expected, and a good one to use if you’re looking to identify issues with an application or computer system. It can be used differently during the software development cycle, but it’s often most useful for bug fixing.
You are testing your software after every release is very common in software development. However, this may not be necessary for everyone – especially if you work on a small project or with simple code bases. After all, in most cases, it’s rather straightforward to fix bugs and improve existing features without much effort involved: write new test cases that verify the correct behavior of newly implemented functionality and make sure they pass!
However, there might be times when some testing activities require more time than just writing new tests (and even fixing them later on). These situations include bug fixes done by a team member who’s not yet familiar with the codebase or new features that require extensive testing and documentation.
When Should You Use Retesting?
So, how do we decide when retesting is needed? First, it depends on your project size (and what elements are worth testing). For example, if you have a large product line spread across several products, retesting should be part of your regular process because every release may affect other system parts in various ways.
Also, consider that fixing each bug will lead to additional tests being created by developers – which means they can spend more time writing test cases than fixing bugs. Besides, there are situations when, even if you’re confident in your codebase, it is still necessary to retest some system parts after every release.
For example: new functionality may introduce inconsistencies and unexpected behaviors that can be difficult to detect at first unless they become apparent during testing or on users’ feedback (and this should be a regular part of your QA process). Also, consider cases where test automation has not yet been implemented – these tests will show issues only after the additional effort is put into making them pass again!
In such situations, maintaining skepticism about newly introduced bugs is a good idea – why should we trust our codebase if it’s already been proven that testing can be unreliable?
Best Practices if Retesting
What are the best practices when deciding whether to retest and how do you do this?
Here are some guidelines:
- Each time you commit a bug fix, include enough information about the situation where the problem was introduced so people can reproduce it and retest. If your QA team has more than one pair of eyes working on an issue, they can often do this faster than development (in fact, don’t forget that developers have their own responsibilities – most importantly, learning from mistakes and fixing bugs). Also, check out support forums when fewer things are happening in them.
- When developing new or old features, ensure all tests passed before release are ready for testing by the QA team. If they do not – ask your QA team to test them and ensure the bugs are fixed; remember that even though you can fix a bug yourself (using automated tests or manual testing), there is always some chance of making mistakes.
- When developing the new version of an existing feature, try including as many regression tests as you can in your codebase – this will at least reduce risks associated with fixing regressions caused by changes made during the development of other features on top of it.
- When releasing a beta version of the product, ensure it’s fully functional and that all bugs have been fixed (this is especially important for bug fixes made during development or testing on top of this new feature).
- When releasing stable versions, make sure that all bugs have been fixed. This is especially important for bug fixes made during the development of other features on top of the released feature – if they were not included in their corresponding releases, then when people try using these new versions, they may encounter problems caused by those changes. If there are still some remaining issues, fix them as soon as possible.
Retesting vs Regression Testing
First, retesting and regression testing are both types of software validation you can conduct during your development process. They’re not the same, though: retesting is done at the end of a particular phase of work, often when you have a working product but need to ensure it isn’t riddled with bugs or errors from early testing. Regression testing is a type of software validation done at various points throughout the development process to ensure certain aspects of your code are working correctly.
In some cases, retesting may be performed simply by reading through earlier test results or reports and checking off any issues you know have been fixed. If you want even more thorough results, you can check off earlier issues one by one to make sure they’ve been taken care of. An IT tester might even go as far as to test portions of the software that were never tested.
In other situations, regression testing may be done by running a test plan on every version or update of your application, starting with the most recent. In this way, you can ensure that each change in your application is adequately tested.
A Word on Duplicate Testing With retesting comes the possibility of duplicate testing. This happens when someone tests an element of your software and finds a problem, but nothing is done to correct it or make sure it doesn’t happen again. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you can create a database or checklist of issues from prior testing so that testers can easily use it to avoid duplicate testing.
Have some documentation in place for every software product you’re working on. If people are testing older products, you can ask them to review the original documentation and update it with any changes they find.
One of the most important aspects of retesting is keeping track of the issues, how they were found, and what was done to fix them. If an issue isn’t fixed, but instead, new problems are created by fixing a different one, it will be difficult for you or your team to know what went wrong.
Though retesting can be time-consuming, it’s a very important part of software validation and is especially useful when used with other testing techniques. As long as the issues found during retest are being resolved, you can continue retesting on older products to ensure your latest work hasn’t caused any issues.
