Regression Testing and Retesting

These two terms are often used interchangeably by inexperienced testers OR experienced developers/PM’s who are not known to testing. Anyways, I am not pointing to them in this post but just telling the difference between the two terms.

First Retesting , it is the term which is used to describe the testing effort of verifying the bugs OR defects logged in for the previous build and taking appropriate action on them. By appropriate action , I mean to close/defer/reopen the defect. To be specific “Retesting” is a subset of “Regression Testing”. Coming on the super set “Regression Testing” , it is testing of the module(s) in which bugs where logged for previous build and also the interrelated modules just to make sure that the bug fixes has not introduced new bugs into the system and the modules are working fine overall. Regression testing has wider scope as compared to Retesting because in the former we are covering the whole module and also the other interrelated modules and not just concentrating on the bug fixes only.

Thanks & Regards,
Amit