QASource Blog

No automation service ever left a comment in a report that read: “Think we could do better here.” When you test using binary software, you get left with “yes” or “no” answers—never insights.

There’s a world of difference between “good” and “good enough.” Think of it in end-user terms—what sort of emotional response are you hoping for when your customers get their hands on your product for the first time? You want them to be impressed, at ease and to have the best experience possible. You don’t launch a new product, or upgrade an existing one, with the intention of your customers eventually getting the hang of it after a few trial and error moments. That’s the difference between “good” and “good enough,” and it’s what ultimately leads to success—or failure. Achieving that difference is what your QA process should be all about.

Quality is the true measure of product success. Poor user experience or application performance negates any advantages you achieve in delivery speed or production cost. Put simply, if it does not work, it is not worth producing. It is, therefore, critical to our product success that we can accurately measure and track test results to ensure our testing is delivering against our business goals. Understanding software quality metrics, especially in automated testing, helps us identify what is working well and what needs improvement.

There’s no denying that automation and automated testing is winning the day. For teams using the Agile method, automation is the only way that repetitive testing can keep up with the pace of the team. It’s faster, more cost-effective, and less prone to human error, and it’s essential to running a large quantity of tests across a variety of different platforms in little time. All that being said, there’s still a major case to be made for manual testing. Manual testing is really the only tried-and-true way to test for the end user, and it’s still worthwhile for any product company designing and delivering to humans.

Evolution can be brutal. A piece of code you once considered an innovative breakthrough can put your entire application in danger once integrated within original application code. That is why we call it software development-today’s Agile approach in software development is a constant survival-of-the-fittest test. Regression testing is the final arbiter of this evolution.

Manual testing offers you a glimpse into your product’s future, the end-user experience. Automation testing may get things done in a hurry, but only expert human perspective can see how your tests inform and improve your product’s performance in the market. The process can be labor and resource intensive, but that only means you need to learn how to improve your manual testing process in order to maximize the benefits. Toward that end, we have put together a few pieces of advice that will help you strike the right balance of quantitative and qualitative testing.

Time, cost, and quality. These three elemental forces of software development influence every aspect of our QA process. They are the practical realities that, ultimately, determine how we prepare a web application to meet the expectations and needs of our users. Each point on a web application testing checklist has to be assessed in reference to the timelines of our release cycle, the constraints of our budget, and the rigorous nature of the testing needed to ensure a robust and satisfying final product.

The sporting world has long struggled with deciding the significance of the “V” in its MVP awards. The use of the word “valuable” clouds the thinking on whether voters are searching for the player most valuable to the team and its success, or the flat-out best player that year. We face a similar problem when comparing manual and automation testing in the QA process. Each approach has its pros and cons, but ultimately it is hard to declare one as universally superior. The most effective way to decide between them is to consider how often each has the advantage over the other. Automation gives you greater coverage, API integration, and speed. Manual testing, on the other hand, gives you greater human input, and an accompanying eye for detail and solutions.

While change is imminent, normal, and healthy, manual testing isn’t going anywhere. It will be around for as long as the end user-your customers-are human. Whenever any new feature is added or modified in the application, it raises the chances of breakage in the existing functionality, which might create bad user experience. To verify the application from end user’s perspective, it’s always better to have the application manually tested by domain experts who are able to imagine and execute complex business-specific scenarios (Click to Tweet). This sort of rigorous, critical thinking is uniquely human, and it cannot (yet) be replicated by test scripts.