aftertests

Aftertests are testing activities conducted after a primary testing cycle to confirm that recent changes behave as expected and have not introduced new problems. They are commonly performed after bug fixes, feature additions, or major refactors, and before release or handover to maintenance. The goal is to provide additional assurance beyond the initial test pass and to validate fixes in more realistic conditions.

Typical purposes include validating fixes, checking for regressions in related areas, confirming compatibility across environments, and verifying data integrity after migrations or upgrades. Aftertests may also assess deployment readiness, performance under expected load, and security controls that were not exhaustively exercised in earlier tests.

Activities and scope vary by organization but commonly involve regression testing, exploratory testing focused on recent changes, data migration checks, and end-to-end scenario validation. They may leverage automated test suites plus manual testing, often executed in a staging environment that mirrors production.

Deliverables include a test report summarizing results, a defect log, risk assessment, and a pass/fail determination against release criteria. The outcomes influence release decisions and may trigger additional fixes or post-release monitoring.

The term aftertests is not universally standardized and may be used differently across teams. In some contexts, it overlaps with post-release validation or post-deployment testing and can be part of a broader continuous delivery or DevOps workflow.