Manual testing VS Automated testing

Quality Assurance is part of an organization’s quality management activities. It includes all tasks and activities aimed at ensuring that the final product will meet specifications. 

The dilemma is in the different methods to be able to execute these tests: manual testing or automated testing?   

In this article, you will be able to know better the characteristics and advantages of using each of them in your tests. 

What is manual Manual? 

Manual tests are performed by a person who is responsible for detecting faults and reporting them. This type of testing is mainly used for functional usability and/or exploratory tests.  

In these tests, the engineer has all the control over the execution of a project since they do not require the use of tools or scripts. 

By not requiring the use of any tool, the company has a lower expense in tests, however, professionals are needed to carry out the entire process that the automation tools would perform.  

Manual testing is suitable for finding visual errors and testing the operation of an application. For this, human intervention is considered more precise and effective compared to automated tools. 

However, manual testing also has a number of drawbacks: 

• These types of tests are slower and prone to human error. 
• They are not advisable for all types of tests. 
• The cost of manual tests depends on human resources, so hiring staff is a necessary expense to be able to run such tests. 

Manual testing is appropriate for: 

• Exploratory testing: investigating new product features from different perspectives. Scan tests usually take a manual process. 
• Usability tests: these types of tests can also be executed automatically. They increase the chances of a product working the way users expect.  
• Ad-hoc tests: these are tests that can be carried out at any time during a QA process without the need for prior planning.  
• Short-term testing: Manual testing is perfect for simple, time-consuming processes.  

Once you start performing more regressive tests, that is, repetitive over a long period of time, it is advisable to start with automatic testing to save time and cost.  

What about automated testing? 

Automatic tests allow to increase the productive capacity, efficiency and agility in the response to the user. Automation runs tests faster than manual tests and improves team productivity by receiving more information from tests run. 

Some advantages of automation are:  

• Greater homogeneity.  
• More tests in less time. 
• Reliability in every process. 
• Improves the quality of processes. 
• Perfects the analysis of functions and diagnosis.  

A company should start automating when it is conducting repetitive, complex, and rapid execution tests.  Automatic testing is best suited in: 

• Regression tests: These types of tests are carried out to verify whether the functions of a pre-existing application continue to function properly once they have been moved to new versions of the application.  
• Performance tests: These are tests intended to measure the behavior and performance of the system, so they are usually run by automation tests. 
• Repetitive functional tests: this type of testing is not usually carried out by manual testing since it takes a long time and often many errors appear. 
• Execute what manual testing is not capable of achieving: the continuous development of systems limits human intervention in many processes. Some of these tests to automate are code coverage analysis, memory leak detection, and other types of security testing.  

Automation is not a substitute for manual testing, but a complement to it.  In order to carry out automatic tests, companies must invest in automation tools that allow them to run them.  

Thanks to automation, companies can detect any error in time and solve it effectively. In this article, you will be able to know a little more about the importance that test automation has taken in recent years. 

It is important for companies to know when it is convenient to change from testing to one that best suits their current needs. However, on many occasions, companies are not aware of when they must change their testing.  

Results obtained in each test 

When we start executing the tests of a project it is essential to know what are the results that can provide us with both types of testing, both manual and automatic. 

In manual tests we get the following results: 

• Detect problems: this allows you to understand the problems that exist and how it is possible to solve them. 
• Understanding: through manual testing, it is possible to know the opinions of future users. 
• Create new situations: it is possible to create situations from the real world to the software. 
• Unexpected errors: When a professional run software tests, unexpected situations are encountered that are not possible in automatic tests.  

With automatic testing we achieve: 

• New functions: it is validated that all those functionalities are present. 
• Faster feedback: by running tests faster it is also possible to check which tests pass validation or not.  
• Reuse: once the test is tested, it can be reused as many times as you want. 
• Specifications: Allows you to test a specific part of the software you are working with. 
• Avoid manual errors: thanks to automation it is possible to avoid errors in those repetitive tests for manual testing. 

CENTUM Digital solutions in Quality Assurance 

At CENTUM Digital we know the complexity of each test. Therefore, we have a Hybrid Quality Assurance, a solution through which we advise you on the type of testing that best suits your needs. In addition, we accompany you throughout the process of running tests, putting at your disposal our entire team of both manual and automatic testers.