How To Select a Regression Testing Automation Tool For Web Applications

After you have identified the right tool for the project, optimize the QA process by following these regression testing automation best practices:

1. Plan your QA strategy:  Build adequate time into the product lifecycle for testing, decide where QA fits into the process, and consider available resources. E.g., will every user story be tested? What kind of testing strategy will be used?
2. Identify the test cases to automate:  Test cases that can benefit most from automation are repetitive, needed for multiple builds, hard to perform manually, susceptible to human errors, using multiple data sets, or time-consuming when tested manually.
3. Test early and often:  Bugs caught early in the development process will have less impact on the project. They are cheaper and faster to fix than those discovered later during production or deployment.
4. Integrate development and QA teams:  Automation and development teams should be working together seamlessly to reduce churn, minimize miscommunications, and increase the efficiency of the entire development cycle.
5.  Create quality test data:  Use external data to make automated tests reusable and easy to maintain. To add testing scenarios, you’d simply extend the files with new data so you don’t have to edit the actual test script.
6. Create tests that are resistant to UI changes:  Set up the tests such that they don’t rely on location coordinates to find objects by providing unique names for the controls. This allows you to create stable test scripts that won’t break due to UI changes.
7. Coordinate development and QA:  Often times, testing can be done most effectively when conducted one sprint behind the development cycle.  Without such a lag, the code could be too fluid for effective testing and changes could break the automation.