Landmark Graphics’ Decision Space Nexus, a cutting-edge reservoir simulation software suite, saw a shift in development practices as the Nexus team fully embraced Agile methodologies in a more structured Scrum environment. A crucial lesson learned was the necessity of an automated regression test suite for GUI functionality.

Before finalizing commitments, the team executed the development regression suite and relied on additional testing methods, including a customer regression suite, a manual smoke test, and exploratory testing. The developer regression suite proved effective, fostering confidence in check-ins. However, it failed to uncover issues in complex customer models, complicating matters as the customer regression suite demanded nearly a week for computation on a high-end cluster to determine test outcomes.

Moreover, subtle changes in data, algorithmic code, or processing environments led to inconsistent output results. Beyond the time-intensive nature of these tests, debugging issues in complex customer data posed significant challenges for the Nexus development team.