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Should you use manual testing, automated testing, or both?

Both manual and automated testing are crucial to developing a successful application or website on time and in budget, so it’s important to make them an integral part of your project’s planning from day one. As the saying goes, a stitch in time saves nine—and with software testing, it’s always best to plan for it early on rather than spend twice the money (and time) it would take to test on fixes and patches down the road.

You may choose to focus your testing efforts in one (or both) of two ways: manual testing or automated testing. Large applications may even require regression testing, which is designed to ensure that new changes don’t break the old functionality that’s already deployed. Each type of testing has its pros and cons—let’s take a look at both in more detail.

Manual testing

First, let’s look at manual testing. Manual testing can be the more tedious and time-consuming of the two, especially if you’re making lots of changes to your app in the future. You’re not paying for automation tools, but you are paying for someone’s time—and in the short-term, that may be more cost effective. It all depends on what you have planned for the life cycle of your app.

What you lose in the efficiency of automation testing you’ll get back with more real-world QA feedback like you’d get from the average user. In other words, you’re getting the human element to your testing. That’s because manual testing is just that—a tester going through your program and using it just like any other user would. By interacting with your app, a manual tester can compare expectations for how the app should run with outcomes, then provide feedback on what didn’t work. They’ll also be able to weigh in on the visuals—something computers can’t do.

For instance, a manual tester could tell you that the contrast between a button and the background is too light, which makes it hard to see the button and understand what action needs to be taken. This type of user interface (UI) feedback is something automated testing wouldn’t find, making manual testing closer to the sort of feedback you might hear from actual customers. If you have the time and a good QA team (larger applications require more than just one QA person), manual testing is the way to go.

Be sure you’re getting a fresh set of eyes before deployment. It’s often helpful to hire someone brand new to the application to run through the process and identify UI issues so that it’s user-friendly when you deploy it.

Manual testing pros

• Get visual feedback. Scripts can’t provide opinions and input about how a UI looks and feels like a person can.
• The human element. You’re getting the exact kind of feedback a person would give you, and that can be invaluable. Being able to predict what your users will or won’t like—things a computer can’t give feedback on—ahead of time can influence your design and make it better from the bottom up.
• Less expensive in the short-term. If you’re only testing a simple app once, and don’t expect lots of updates, manual testing doesn’t require you to invest in expensive tools or software.
• Flexible, on-the-fly testing. Testing requires you to write, program, and review test cases for your software. But, if you really only need to test one small change, you can manually test it right then and there.

Manual testing cons

• Less thorough than automation testing. You always have to account for human error. When a script is running the testing, it’s less likely to skip or miss things.
• Testing fatigue. Just like how you wouldn’t want the developers who’ve built an application to test if to QA because they’re so intimately familiar with it, there’s the risk that your QA people could get used to your application and know how it works. This can lead to testing fatigue and errors slipping through the cracks. Tedious, repetitive tasks can make testers weary, so they’re more prone to missing a mistake.
• Not reusable. If you foresee a lot of changes and updates to your app in the future, you’ll have to manually test all over again to ensure no new changes broke the build.

Automated testing

Automated testing is all about comparing your expected results for how a program should function with how it actually functions. Automation testers will write and run tests that include a series of predefined actions that can occur in your software, then seeing if things run according to plan. When the outcomes of testing don’t match the expectations going in, you’ve likely got some bugs, and automation scripts will point those out to your team so you can get them fixed.

Automated testing is very popular in the QA industry—especially with large software projects or apps/sites that have a lot of forms to fill out. It’s not as personalized, but can be more thorough.

Here’s how it works: Automated testers setup testing scripts designed to go through every scenario of a “user story.” Every business requirement and functionality has a user story that defines how a different users interact with the software.

Each page of your app or site could have several user stories. The scripts then go through every possibility of a user story and find errors where human testers won’t. For instance, you could have a form where a user chooses one of 50 states. A script would go through and submit a new user application for each of the 50 states to make sure they all work properly. A human tester would probably only submit an application for one or two states. Then, after a change or a bug fix is implemented, automated testing performs regression tests to ensure those new changes don’t break old functionality.

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Automated testing pros

• Find more bugs than a human tester. Scripts can be much more thorough, catching bugs that humans might miss—due either to volume or monotony of the task.
• Get the speed and efficiency of computers. Scripts are faster than humans, so you’ll get more done in less time.
• Reusable tests for code that gets frequent updates. If you’re constantly making updates and republishing units, you don’t have to rewrite test scripts each time, you can reuse them in your regression testing.
• Gives your team a break. There’s a better chance your development team will get fatigued and weary if they’re manually testing an app after coding it. Automating testing will give them a chance to focus more on the big picture.
• Better visibility into app performance. With automation testing, it’s easier for the team as a whole to review results and be on the same page, vs. one person manually compiling testing results.

Automated testing cons

• Lacks the human element. As we mentioned above, manual testing gives the added human element of an actual user interacting with an app, and all the preferences and visual cues that come along with it.
• Less UI feedback. Without that human element, you also won’t get insight into visual elements of your UI, like color choices, font size, contrast, or button sizes.
• Can get pricey. The tools (and even the up-front time) to run automation testing can be pricey, but factor in the reusability and time saved.

Who do you need to hire?

You’ll need at least one person to drive the QA process, but how many experts you’ll need will depend on the size of your project (and your deadline).