An Open Framework for Managed Regression Testing

In the prevailing competitive environment, companies are facing tremendous market pressures to launch defect-free products in a timely manner. This challenge is compounded when a product runs into sustenance phase because complete regression runs need to be performed for each change/enhancement made in every build/release of the product-under-test. This paper discusses an architectural framework approach to address the above challenge, thereby aiming to make regression testing a simple, repeatable and automated exercise. The framework design encapsulates hierarchical test case management, multi-user support, product version maintenance, and automated test execution and result analysis to facilitate easy testing. The open architecture of the framework allows it to augment capabilities of some other testing tools by providing adapters to them, thus, eliminating the rigidity of use of a particular tool. The paper also draws a comparison of the architectural approach with other existing frameworks and presents a cost-benefit analysis of the suggested approach.