/qa-manual-istqb

Regression suite strategy (risk-based)

Part of the qa-manual-istqb skill. See SKILL.md for full context.

Principles

• Optimize for risk reduction, not maximum test count.
• Keep tiers fast-to-slow; use smoke as a gating suite.
• Rebalance when product risk changes (new features, incidents, high-change areas).

Tagging approach (Playwright-friendly)

• Use Playwright's tag annotation (e.g., { tag: '@smoke' }) — never in test titles — so CI can run subsets via --grep.
• Keep the tag taxonomy small: exactly one of @smoke, @sanity, @regression, @e2e, @api, @destructive per test; document it in the suite definition.

Add/remove rules

• Add tests for:
  • Escaped defects (regression prevention)
  • High-risk areas with change
  • Critical integrations
• Remove or rewrite tests that are:
  • Duplicated coverage
  • Obsolete behavior
  • Flaky without a clear oracle

Health metrics

• Suite duration per tier
• Flake rate (retries, non-deterministic failures)
• Defect detection effectiveness (escaped defect trends)