Manual Testing vs Automated Testing

I think there is a need to educate QA managers about the benefits and limitations of automation.There is a need to separate the facts from the fictions. But here is the problem, in most cases consultants are brought in to fix problems of prior attempts instead of initial setup. At this point the managers have already learned (painfully) the pitfalls of automation. In order to avoid this painful experience I would recommend (most automation engineers will agree with me) to spend more time up front doing research about the styles and techniques of automation and find an architecture that fits the environment. There is no doubt that automation adds a great value to overall QA process but, short of knowledge and understanding about automation and lack of planning can also cause a nightmare. Automation has limitations and can be use for only few functionalities. Automation will be mostly useful for performance testing. So Manual and Automation both are equally beneficial.

yes

Both are equally important but manual is suggested before automated.

An automatic regression test may also be fooled if the program output varies significantly in such these manual testing may be more effective.

Cheers

I have many years of both development and testing experience. To start with there are
couple of mistakes that developers usually make. Something like missing the validations
on input. This is usually caught during the initial phase of testing. Later once
the modules matures automated testing can be considered.

Usually automated testing is good for CLI based applications. In case of a CLI the
text usually stays intact and it doesn't change that frequently. If you take a GUI
based application, automation will be very difficult during the initial stages of testing.
Like for example for every release the GUI will be constantly changing accoding to the
customer requirement. It will only stabilize only after some years of being there.

For regression tests automation is a good idea. If you wanted to keep testing the
same thing again and again it will be boring and we loose interest on the same.
Due to the lose of interest we also loose the focus on testing and it becomes
error prone.

Coming back to the regression tests, the reason I am saying the regression tests
are good for automation is the we can focus on the new feature tests rather
than on the old test suites.

Manual Testing more beneficial because we can't trust on any tool whenever we want to give our best. we always trust on our eyes and brain that's why Manual Testing is better than automated testing.

Both are having there own importance,

we need to do the automation,once the product is in stable,if the iteration's are more manual testing is good

with the automation ,we can't test the product completely

Sachin, I completely agree, that Test Managers need to be educated, and should've grown having done both automation and manual testing. The health of the application under test, or the over all tests should first be planned for correctly. The tool, is only as smart as the tests that are prepared, and so really much of the onus of coverage is dependant on the owner of the quality of the product. The owners invariably would be the manual test organization. The place of automation should be understood as being productivity accelerators, and enhancers of test coverage. The requirements for areas for automation must collaboratively be arrived by both the manual and the automation tester.

Mr Sameer, I hope you do evaluate the purpose of automation testing before starting it. coz any company would not support if for fun of employees. it should be worth automating application.

Manual testing is more beneficial. As for any project starting with testing once has to do a round of manual testing to check the basic functionalities are working fine. As far as automation is considered, it should be done only when lot of regression testing is required and only for stable applicaton. Lot of projects are now following agile methodology which makes difficult to automate it. Also automation is benificial for longterm projects. in fact we should evaluate the ROI for automation before starting any automation project . that would be cost effective as well as feasible too.

Sameer....I agree that the points you have mentioned are a part of the process when planning the testing, but these are more related to the project management and less to the technical aspect of the testing itself. Such as the time required.....Automation testing is always an ongoing process. No one creates automated tests for a One off testing cycle (unless they need to do load testing as well which can only be replicated truly by performance tools). The no. of bugs being delivered by the developers is a very dynamic no. That again is dependent on the past data which is calculated by the management. So....as a tester, I would again like to say that both the testing have their own significance. There are some things that should or could only be tested manually and some that need automation. So again.....this debate is baseless unless the specifics are provided.

Manual Testing is more beneficial then Automation testing bcoz its easy to use and in mostly companies uses manual testing.

Mr.Hiten i definitely agree with your argument.You are right when you are saying that manual testing is necessary to achieve 100% satisfaction because human being has only developed machines and one can't rely on the machines for everything.Moreover a machine can't be held accountable for the mistake so its better to do manual testing rather than automated one.

What do you say?

I agree with Hiten..that before we go for automation tools.we must lear the basic of manual testing i.e functional testing.

thanks

You cannot simply rely on Automated testing. Automated testing mainly takes care of performance issues, but user experience issues, logical bugs etc can never be detected by Automation testing. Manual testing is very much required only for the reason that Computer Cannot Think.

Hi.. Diptanjan,

YES i agree with your point that both are important in addition to that manual testing allows the tester to perform more ad-hoc (random testing). In my experiences, more bugs are found via ad-hoc than via automation. And, the more time a tester spends playing with the feature, the greater the odds of finding real user bugs.

I agree with your argument Varun but If you take my opinon about Automation vs Manual then i would say that its not only monetary factors or size of application that makes us to decide what to go for. What i think that apart from these factors a Project Manager need to consider;
1. How much quality the development team delivers to the testers (Less bugs or more bugs)?
2. What is the project deadline ?
3. How critical is the project ?

Mr.Varun i agree with you.The type of testing to be used depends on the environment in which you want to practice that.But can you elaborate on your argument a little more as it will give more clarity to all the participants.

Manual testing is necessary before going for automation. Because in automation testing first of all we have to select the test cases of that application which is going to be automated. If application is stable and there is no issue with the test cases which are going to be automated. After that we will go further. There is application scope for automation testing. We use the Automation for regression testing, even we can also check the application functionality by using tool (QTP). but it takes lots of time.

Eg. if an application has some changes in next release then first we check than changes by manually and after that make the script of that changes and run that script with all other script.

Summery: Automation testing is not possible without manually testing. First phase is manually testing from which tester will know that application is stable and it can be automated.

Thanks & Regards,

Manish Soni (Testing Engineer, Quality Center, QTP Certified)

Without having knowledge of basic/manual testing concepts such as human intelligence, validation and verification person can not walk effectively on Automated Testing. Any system or application can not rely only on Automation Tool, for that human efforts are pre requisite to held on.

So, as per me Manual Testing is more beneficial overall!!

Manual testing is the more beneficial testing

its the first step, it filters out the bugs.

Yes automation tools saves more time and effort But even though it saves time and effort, it is not that much accurate
Here to test a code again we are using code........
manually we can test accuratly than tool,

while testing a software by understanding it's functionality and it's business value and if the tester is familiar with the domain and technology...he will get number of real business use casesand he can test maximum number of use cases, but if we take tool we have some limitations,,,,

but for some specific cases like performance, regression testing automation tool must required

but finally i concludes that Manual testing is good than automation testing

Manual testing is better becoz u can go through each part of the code and u can check every aspect of the application by running negative test case/positive test case.
Automation is mostly benefit only for regression testing i.e becoz of time constrain.
rest i will think that maual testing is always better. Some time tools always left behind such a common error where on manual tester can get is easily.
The most important thing is tht every thing has its benefit as well as drawbacks and it depend upon the person as well as environment, but Still Manual is always better.

You didn't mention what is the place?

Firstly we should understand the concept of Automation and Manual testing. I think this debate is baseless because simply comparing the two types of testing without talking about the environment is useless. I think everyone would agree with me that automation is generally used for regression. And in that case it goes without saying that Automation (if possible) is the way to go. Now, why did I say (if possible)? If anyone comes up and says that each and everything in an application can be automated without spending a handsome amount on various different Tools then I can challenge him/her with some very simple examples.

So if anyone asks which is better Manual or Automation then it is very important to include the environment in which testing is to be carried out.

So if it is regression then, if possible, automation is the best...but if you are just starting to create an application...where will you get the application to automate it? ... so u don't really have a choice (then why ask which is better? ) ... you will have to do manual.

Automated testing is ultimatley writing code to verify code. As such the basic act of verification will be based on human intillegence. So Manual verification is the basis or core of testing.