The first five chapters of this book help practical testers fill up their “toolbox” with various test criteria. While studying test criteria in isolation is needed, one of the most difficult obstacles to a software organization moving to level 3 or 4 testing is integrating effective testing strategies into the overall software development process. This chapter discusses various issues involved with applying test criteria during software development. The overriding philosophy is to think: if the tester looks at this as a technical problem, and seeks technical solutions, he or she will usually find that the obstacles are not as large as they first seem.

REGRESSION TESTING

Regression testing is the process of re-testing software that has been modified. Regression testing constitutes the vast majority of testing effort in commercial software development and is an essential part of any viable software development process. Large components or systems tend to have large regression test suites. Even though many developers don't want to believe it (even when faced with indisputable evidence!), small changes to one part of a system often cause problems in distant parts of the system. Regression testing is used to find this kind of problem.

It is worth emphasizing that regression tests must be automated. Indeed, it could be said that unautomated regression testing is equivalent to no regression testing. A wide variety of commercially available tools are available.