Techniques for manual testing are those in which people must physically participate. Some believe that automated testing is becoming more and more popular because of its reputation for speed, economy, and efficiency. This post illustrates why manual testing is significant because it would be a mistake to undervalue its importance.

Automated testing cannot accurately simulate how people interact with items that are made for them. To make up for this, software testing plans typically use a variety of test techniques that include both manual and automated testing, allowing for the fulfillment of all requirements. Routine and repetitive testing, which may be very time-consuming and laborious to execute manually, benefits the most from automation. 

11 Justifications for Why Manual Testing Is Still Vital

As a result of the necessity for human intervention to investigate any faults or issues discovered during automated testing, manual testing comes last in the QA process. The best course of action is to use a combination of approaches, but let's first look at some of the benefits of manual testing. 

1. Humans for Humans Usability and UX Testing

Testing for usability and user experience (UX) allows testers to determine whether a website or other piece of software operates as intended by the designer when used by actual users. An observer oversees invited user test subjects while they complete a set of pre-designed tasks during usability/UX testing. The tester keeps track of how successfully they complete the tasks and whether they have any difficulties. They can also gather information that is helpful, such as if there are more steps required to reach a destination than the user is comfortable with, and whether it is simple to find and choose navigational signposts. 

Usability/UX testing gives the tester the freedom to follow their intuition and spot any unusual routes that a user might take. They can then go over any perceived benefits of making adjustments with their team.

Fully automating usability/UX testing is not feasible because the process makes use of people's distinctive characteristics to reveal important information. To track levels of visual attention across a website, methods like eye-tracking software can be effective.

It is preferred that no one associated with the project conduct usability/UX testing, as opposed to the test experts who lead the sessions. 

2. Problems Can Be Found in the Most Inconspicuous Places

The degree of human intervention that is brought to a project can be used to gauge the success of manual testing. However, automation's most useful contribution is a robotic adherence to predetermined sequences that testers would find tedious and monotonous. Ad hoc or exploratory testing is incompatible with automated testing since it is consistently non-thinking and makes improvisation impossible.

Ad hoc and exploratory testing urges a hands-on, unscripted approach to uncovering bugs and usability concerns, as described in our companion piece Types of Manual Testing. Testers are urged to use their initiative and curiosity to pursue frequently irrational lines of inquiry and investigate new possibilities. When a problem does arise, human testers are quick to change their course of action. This is not feasible in automated testing because the script would have to be interrupted before testing could resume. When something may have seemed proper when it was written but needs some correction after being coded, simple common sense is sometimes required. Humans are the only species with the ability to recognize when something is wrong, supporting the continuous value of manual testing.

3. The Short Run Economy

Regression, smoke, and sanity testing are examples of tests that benefit from automation, but setting them up can be costly and time-consuming before any time or money benefits are realized. Automated scripts provide test teams with frequent, repeatable testing in the long run, which speeds up turnaround and can improve the overall quality of the product. 

However, for quick projects, the additional time and procedures required to set up an automated testing cycle before testing the script itself can cancel out any potential savings.

The development cycle will take less time once a test run has been automated and made to work, but if an interface, for example, undergoes a comprehensive redesign, these changes can cause issues and many additional hours will be needed to update the automated tests. Additionally, it might not be realistic to automate GUI testing until the build is more stable if the changes are a result of an ongoing process, which means that the interface is constantly reviewed and refined.

The workday should be simpler for testers while testing is ongoing since automation lessens the inherent monotony of repeating test runs and the requirement for constant concentration. The need for human testing arises from the fact that automated tests might occasionally have faults of their own, making it crucial to identify the problems so they can be fixed.

Going through this method for brief test runs has limited benefits due to the time and money required before automated testing can start. They will fail to achieve any economic goals due to their shortness and relative simplicity.

4. Having a Wider Perspective

Nothing in testing compares to a tester being able to glean a thorough overview of a product or project simply by drawing on their education, professional experience, and life wisdom. This type of manual testing, which doesn't require test plans and relies instead on judgments based solely on a gut feeling that something is off, cannot be replicated by an automated setup. The fault will then be located and reported to the developers after more formal testing, but the tester's special and intangible skills provide the first drive.

5. Automated tests may include flaws and errors

Despite the advantages of automated testing, scripts can only test what they are intended to test. This implies that there is always a chance that the author of the screenplay will omit a potential problem that has to be mentioned. At this moment, there's a good possibility the possible problem won't be evaluated because human input hasn't been added. It's crucial to arrange a manual testing sweep to do checks as part of the setup procedure before testing can be approved and then started because errors of omission are frequently made. Even then, errors in a script could not become apparent until testing is well underway

6. Testing on various devices and browsers

Cross-browser testing is crucial to the overall testing procedure. A cross-browser testing tool is utilized, which regularly runs the same script on a potentially enormous number of browser, device, and version combinations. Functionality testing is often an automated procedure. However, manual testing is the greatest choice when assessing the more tangible, tactile, and visual components because human testers have the qualities that allow for free-ranging initiative and can investigate utilizing the senses of sight and touch. There will occasionally be a choice to be made that requires compromise. One browser may not render a website perfectly, thus one will need to make a decision on what is tolerable.

Cross-browser testing takes the economy of scale into account. Careful testing across many of the combinations and more contemporary hardware and software versions is absolutely necessary for significant household-name product runs. This necessitates function testing through automation, but manual testing provides a feasible option for test runs at the other end of the size spectrum.

7. The Benefits of Manual Testing Variations

Automated testing won't typically depart from the test script's path, which can either be a good thing or a bad one depending on the situation. Even when following test cases, a person physically testing something will slightly change each time due to human instincts, the need to digest many inputs, and other factors. This somewhat "rogue" approach may actually be advantageous because testers may find bugs in previously unanticipated places due to a predisposition toward randomization. Of course, this human ability to deviate from robotic behavior can also result in errors, but if any human-made testing faults do occur, manual testing is the best option to fix them.

8. Checking for Connectivity Problems

Due to the variety of options available, including cell phones, tablets, TVs, and integrated Smart homes, checking internet connectivity requires human awareness and interaction, making manual testing the best and most trustworthy approach. Modern high-speed broadband and mobile internet, which extends to 5G, have made it possible to create interconnected gadgets that affect aspects of our lives in ways that were unthinkable even ten years ago. But the network that supports all this wonderful technology determines how well it performs.

Web browsers are used by every connectable hardware, and they occasionally experience connectivity problems as well as speed decreases.

A site or application must already have a backup option in place when dropouts occur to prevent the system from failing entirely when connectivity is lost or decreased. The drastically limited functioning of a fallback will hold the system in a state of stasis until repair or recovery can be achieved, similar to how the well-known Safe Mode found on a computer operates. Google Documents' fallback prohibits any new text or data from being entered during an internet outage. By knowing that nothing has been entered, the person trying to keep typing understands that nothing was lost when the connection was lost. 

9. Assisting Clients

Outside of the test lab, a related and equally significant aspect of testing focuses on the assistance provided to end users once a product has been finished and put on the market. Customers who notice a problem with their purchase may, unfortunately, find stray bugs, which detract from their user experience. This situation rarely calls for automation because customer satisfaction is better maintained when their issue is handled by a human support representative. Automation runs the danger of alienating clients in the long run if a fast solution or even an offer of a refund is not made.

Customer service representatives frequently hear bug concerns. When a customer reports a problem, they want an immediate resolution. Testing is necessary to determine whether a problem is the result of a misunderstanding or human mistake or if the product's functionality is being compromised by a bug. The initial stage is typically manual exploratory testing to assess the problem. Further exploratory testing, or testing that adheres to pre-written scripts, will be required if the issue is not a result of human error. Following this procedure enables the agent to respond to the complainant in a more satisfactory manner.

10. Testing for Accessibility

For a variety of reasons, many people find it challenging or cumbersome to utilize devices or access websites in a conventional manner. These can be as simple as requiring a higher page size, which is readily fixed by using Ctrl +, or as complex as requiring an additional setup with software and hardware to help those with particular physical limitations.

The goal of accessibility testing is to highlight specific ways that a website might be improved so that as many users as feasible can use it successfully and enjoy it. The optimal strategy is to include the accessibility testing process inside the overall QA, rather than treating it as an afterthought shortly before release because improving accessibility will benefit many site visitors and is not merely a tick-box activity. Improvements in color blindness accessibility and the accessibility of a reliable screen reader for the deaf will frequently be taken into account.

Again, because value judgments are necessary for this type of assessment, human interaction is best. It can be helpful to use tools like emulators to get data on how the website or application functions. It can also be instructive to get feedback from a variety of people with impairments and age-related limitations.

11. Additional Testing Methods

There will still be more tests to be run that don't fit into any of the predefined categories, in addition to the recognized Types of Manual Testing outlined in our companion piece. For instance, we would wish to check a website's page load time or that it displays properly in Google on a regular basis. Although scheduled testing of this nature is unusual, tools may still be employed

Conclusion

The ratio of human to automated testing will vary depending on the sort of product being tested in a thorough testing effort. As was just discussed, automated testing can relieve the tester of the tediously repetitive components of software testing while manual testing allows for human value judgments to be made on bugs, faults, errors, and omissions.

Your gateway to a rewarding testing career begins with GroTechMinds. We offer comprehensive online manual testing courses designed especially for beginners, giving you the perfect introduction to the world of manual testing. Our commitment extends to offering practical training in both manual and automation testing through real-world projects. This ensures that you not only understand the theoretical concepts but also gain hands-on experience in testing.

Our manual testing courses cover the fundamentals of manual testing and equip you with the skills needed to excel in this field. By combining manual and automation testing, we provide you with a holistic approach to testing. Whether you're a novice looking to start your testing journey or a professional seeking to expand your skills, GroTechMinds has the right course for you.

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