To Automate or Not: Navigating Manual and Automated Testing Paradigms

Despite the evident advantages of automated testing in enhancing speed, precision, and cost-efficiency in specific scenarios, an intriguing statistic reveals that only 5% of companies commit to fully automated testing.

In this article, we will unravel why manual testing remains an indispensable component of every project for the foreseeable future despite the relentless advancement of automated testing technologies.

Manual Testing

Manual testing forms the foundation for automation and is crucial in various scenarios:

• Rapidly Changing Functionality: In situations where product functionality undergoes frequent changes, manual testing becomes pivotal. It offers the flexibility to swiftly adapt to changes without the burden of perpetually updating automated scripts.

• Complex for Automation or Undefined Test Scenarios: Manual testing shines when dealing with intricate or ambiguous test scenarios, such as multi-tier user authentication processes. Manual testers excel in improvisation, navigating the application to uncover edge cases and modifying their test strategies.

• UI/UX Testing:  Manual testers provide critical insights into usability, design effectiveness, and overall user satisfaction, elements often missed by automated processes.

• Small-Scale Projects: Automation may not be necessary on smaller projects where a few manual testers suffice. In such contexts, manual testing provides comprehensive coverage and is a more cost-effective and practical approach.

  
  

Example: Evaluating a novel gesture-based interaction feature in a mobile app requires exclusively manual testing. This involves assessing the naturalness, responsiveness, and overall user satisfaction with these interactions, which automated tests cannot effectively measure.

Testers manually execute gestures to navigate the app, evaluating the feature's intuitiveness and user experience firsthand.

Automated Testing

Automated testing excels in stable environments and for regression testing. It's ideal for scenarios where functionalities are consistent and manual testing might be limited due to high volume, complexity, or repetitive tasks.

Automated tests can run independently, even overnight, providing quick, reliable results by the following day. This makes it a strategic choice for ensuring stability and efficiency in the testing process.

Example: Automated testing is essential for stress testing a web application expected to handle high traffic, such as during a flash sale. It's impractical for manual testing to simulate the scale of simultaneous user activities that automated tools like JMeter can, ensuring the application's performance under peak load conditions.

Comparative Analysis of Manual vs. Automated Testing

Before delving into the central question of our article, let's examine the critical differences between automated and manual testing.

This table summarizes the main distinctions between manual and automated testing, offering a quick overview of their strengths and challenges. The choice between them depends on project requirements, such as scale, complexity, and the need for immediate feedback.

Most organizations opt for a hybrid approach, combining both methods to ensure comprehensive testing and high-quality software delivery.

Why a Balanced Approach to Automated and Manual Testing Is Best for Projects

Therefore, the most optimal approach for this project is the combination of manual and automated testing. Here’s why a balanced integration of automated and manual testing methodologies emerges as the best practice for projects:

#1. The Base for Automation

Manual testing serves as the bedrock upon which automated testing is built. Test cases and scenarios are validated manually to establish a baseline for expected behavior. These manual tests help identify critical features, user workflows, and potential areas of concern, which are then translated into automated test scripts.

Without this initial manual testing phase, automating tests becomes a blind process lacking the human insights to detect early defects and vulnerabilities.

__Manual __test case example:

TITLE: Submit a «Contact Us» form with the valid data

STEPS:

1. Navigate to the «Contact Us» page
2. Enter the valid data
3. Check the «Privacy Policy» checkbox
4. Click the «Send Message» button

EXPECTED RESULT: The «Message is sent» success popup should be displayed

__Automation __example (using Playwright and TypeScript):

import { test } from '@playwright/test'; 

import ContactUsPage from '../pages/ContactUsPage'; 

const validFullName = 'Test Customer'; 

const validEmail = '[email protected]'; 

const validMessage = 'It is interesting to learn about your services, get advice on my project and discuss the free trial in more detail.\nThank you!\nWaiting for feedback!'; 

test.describe('Contact Us form test', () => { 

    test('Submit a «Contact Us» form with the valid data', async ({ page }) => { 

        const contactUsPage = new ContactUsPage(page); 

        // Navigate to the «Contact Us» page 

        await contactUsPage.navigate(); 

        // Enter the valid data 

        await contactUsPage.enterFullName(validFullName); 

        await contactUsPage.enterEmail(validEmail); 

        await contactUsPage.enterMessage(validMessage); 

        // Check the «Privacy Policy» checkbox 

        await contactUsPage.clickPrivacyPolicyCheckbox(); 

        // Click the «Send Message» button 

        await contactUsPage.clickSendMessageButton(); 

        // Verify success message is displayed 

        await contactUsPage.isSuccessModalDisplayed(); 

    }); 

});

#2. Accessibility Testing

Ensuring that software is accessible to users with disabilities is a critical aspect of quality assurance. Manual testing allows testers to evaluate the application from the perspective of users with disabilities, including screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other assistive technologies.

These aspects are challenging to automate fully, making manual testing essential to ensuring inclusivity and compliance with accessibility standards.

For instance, consider a government website that provides essential information to citizens. Manual testing ensures that individuals with visual impairments can navigate the site using screen readers, access necessary forms, and receive critical updates.

These functionalities are challenging to automate comprehensively due to the varied needs of users with disabilities, emphasizing the indispensability of manual accessibility testing in guaranteeing equal access to crucial information.

#3. Risk Management

By leveraging both testing methodologies, teams can ensure a more comprehensive risk assessment. Imagine a healthcare software project where manual testing is crucial for validating patient data input and ensuring the software's compliance with medical regulations.

Automated testing complements this by verifying data integrity and the system's overall functionality.

#4. Continuous Integration and Agile Environments

Combining automated and manual testing in continuous integration (CI) and agile development environments ensures that quality keeps pace with development. For instance, consider a social media platform where automated tests verify core functionalities like user authentication, while manual testing focuses on user interface improvements and usability.

#5. Comprehensive Bug Discovery

Manual testing can uncover subtle, context-specific bugs that automated scripts may overlook. Testers can apply human intuition and creativity to explore the software from end-users perspectives, identifying issues that might not be covered in automated test cases.

This aspect becomes crucial for ensuring a polished user experience, catching unexpected edge cases, and improving overall software quality.

For instance, imagine testing an e-commerce website where an automated script checks the functionality of the "Add to Cart" button and appears to work flawlessly. However, during manual testing, a tester notices that when adding multiple items rapidly, the cart icon briefly flashes, potentially confusing users about the status of their selections.

This nuanced issue, uncovered by human intuition and creativity, highlights the importance of manual testing in ensuring a user-friendly experience, improving overall software quality, and benefiting end-users.

Сonclusions

In conclusion, the ideal approach to software testing lies in a balanced integration of manual and automated testing methodologies. Manual testing, with its adaptability, user-centric insights, and ability to uncover nuanced issues, is the foundation upon which automation is built.

Combining both approaches ensures comprehensive testing, high-quality software, and an improved user experience, making it the best practice for modern projects.