Residual stress measurement is becoming more and more important in academic research and engineering applications and is an important method for obtaining the stress state of components service condition and the manufacturing process, which can provide important reference for the prediction of parts life and control of the manufacturing process. At present, there are various testing methods of residual stress. This paper introduced the testing methods of residual stress and the layer depth that can be achieved. At the same time, several new methods of residual stress measurement and applicable scopes were introduced. The definition and formation mechanism of residual stress were briefly described in this paper and some common surface enhancement processes that can produce residual stress in parts and characteristics of residual stress formed in different processes were introduced. This paper discussed the problems and development trend existing in the testing and research of residual stress. The test of residual stress should be more precise and efficient. The future development directions of residual stress testing are three-dimen-sional nondestructive analysis, combination of residual stress and simulation and big data platform system.