What is maintenance testing?
Maintenance Testing is also known as post-release software testing. Maintenance Testing provides feedback on how well the latest release works in real life and whether it solves the problems identified by pre-release testing. This also helps developers find any new bugs that may have been introduced by the corrective and emergency changes in development, and it ensures that these don’t break functionality with other parts of a system. This testing is accessible to clients who contract for post-release updates or maintenance support from software vendors. This can be performed any time after release: it doesn’t have to wait until another significant version is updated or released. Maintenance Testing is performed by the same team of testers who perform Pre-release testing on already deployed software, and it usually requires a similar level of skills from the tester.
Why is Maintenance Testing required in Software Testing?
Maintenance Testing is required for a few reasons.
- It’s a good idea to do Maintenance Testing before significant changes are made to existing software and without the need for an expensive retesting phase.
- It ensures that changes made during post-release development are not causing problems with other system parts, which can be hard to detect before release without enough hours spent in regression testing.
- In regression testing, testers retest features and parts of the software that were already tested before a new release.
- Bug fixes won’t work correctly if they conflict with new features introduced by the latest release.
- This is done by the same team of testers who performed Pre-release testing, and it usually requires a similar level of skills from the tester for these reasons.
- It is usually provided for free by vendors who offer post-release updates or maintenance support contracts for their customers to identify bugs quickly when system changes are made.
Types Of Maintenance Testing
When the maintenance testers validate the application, they must consider two things. Based on the test types
Confirmation Testing: On this confirmation maintenance testing, the Testers or QA must mainly focus on the modified functionalities.
Regression Testing: Testing the existing functionality to ensure it is not broken or degraded by the new functionality.
Benefits of maintenance testing
Doing regression maintenance testing helps catch bugs before the pre-release stage, ensuring significant changes in development don’t break other parts of the system without regression maintenance testing. It also provides bug fixes to work correctly with new features.
Risks of not doing Maintenance testing
When not testing changes before release, they can break other parts of the system, bug fixes won’t work correctly with new features introduced in new releases, and will require more time to fix them if regression maintenance testing is done.
