The full regression suite takes six hours, so the team releases only once a week. How would you get feedback down to under 30 minutes without losing confidence?

What the interviewer wants to hear

• Analyse the suite: duration, failure history, value and duplicate coverage
• Push tests down the pyramid: replace UI tests with API or unit tests where possible
• Parallelise and shard, with isolated data, and speed up setup via APIs and saved login state
• Risk-based and change-based selection for pull requests; full suite nightly
• Remove or merge low-value and flaky tests, and track confidence with escaped defects

Model answer

I would start with data: how long each test takes, how often it finds real bugs and what it covers. Usually a few slow UI tests dominate, and many duplicate each other. I would move checks down the pyramid, verifying business rules through APIs and keeping UI tests for true user journeys. Setup is often the hidden cost, so tests should create data through APIs and reuse a saved login state instead of clicking through forms. Next comes parallel execution and sharding across CI machines, which needs isolated test data. For pull requests I would run a risk-based subset chosen by the code that changed, plus a critical smoke set, and run the full suite nightly and before releases. Finally I would delete or merge low-value and flaky tests and watch escaped defects to make sure confidence did not drop.

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