How to Test a Hotfix? Advantages, Challenges, and Testing Strategies

Hotfixes are urgent software patches applied directly to live systems to quickly resolve critical issues like security vulnerabilities or major bugs, ensuring minimal disruption to users. They are characterized by their urgency, focused scope, minimal changes, and high risk due to their rapid deployment in production environments. To mitigate potential new problems introduced by hotfixes, a comprehensive testing strategy is essential, involving risk-based testing, regression testing, and exploratory testing, while prioritizing critical areas. Automated testing tools like testRigor can streamline the process by enabling fast and effective test case creation without extensive programming knowledge, integrating seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines for continuous testing. While hotfixes offer a temporary solution to stabilize systems, they require careful planning and collaboration among developers, testers, and operations teams to ensure they do not inadvertently introduce additional issues.