From Manual to Automation Testing: Why Even Bother?
By: Lotus Quality Assurance
Tags: Automation Testing, Automated Testing, Quality Assurance, Automation Testing Tool, Manual Testing

As Automation Testing is currently the emerging trend and one of the tactics that corporations use to lower the cost-barrier and secure minimum leakage percentile in quality assurance, the universal questions lie upon “Why” and “How” to do this.

Not as easy and simple as it appears to be, Automation Testing requires the whole transformation rather than just the transition itself. In this article, the prospects of Automation Testing and how to actualize it will be discussed.

Manual Testing is often the destination for quality control and quality assurance officers when it comes to testing. As opposed to this, Automation Testing has been soaring in popularity with high-yielding prospects, despite many of its roadblocks and challenges.

Manual testing Limitations

Manual Testing has been the most popular method of the quality assurance process in general, yet it exposes some limitations that cause many businesses to become testing-ineffective.

Tedious, timid and time-consuming executions

Manual software testing is carried out by a person sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, aiming at various usage and input combinations, assessing outcomes of the expected action, and logging these observations.

Tests are redone often in the time of development cycles for source code adjustments, or other conditions such as changing operating environments or hardware configurations.

As in a software development life cycle, the quality assurance process has always played a vital role as this secures the well-rounded product release; hence the initial outcome of the project itself.

During software development, every developer analyzes their creations and strives for error-free scenarios.

However, the reality has proven the other way round with high risks of error, and more importantly, the tedious, timid and time-consuming executions throughout the Manual Testing process.

As testers try to figure them out before the product release, they sometimes reappear no matter what they do to plan the test suites. As a result, the test executions have to be carried out in a regression manner to effectively test the software.

Resource-intensive process

The Manual Testing process is no easy task. It has not only unprecedented change but also a heavy emphasis on the quantity of many aspects, including:

The data input

The device being tested

The popular operating system

The whole resource intensive-process of Manual Testing poses great challenges for businesses as this requires critical infrastructure with a large scope, resulting in a budget deficit.

Prone to error

To err is human, not to mention the complexity and diversity of the testing process are always at a high level.

The main reason why Manual Testing is so error-prone is that the test cases might be too tedious and repetitive, causing the disinterest and focus of the testers themselves.

One more reason for this is the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the details of the test plans. As a result, the “cogs” in the machine now fell out of place, making the whole process dysfunctional.

With all of the factors above, the error-prone characteristics will eventually and ultimately affect the firm’s financial and reputation status.

Not systematic and synchronized documentation

In Manual Testing, synchronized documentation for further utility and education is not available.

More often than not, test execution results are stored in Excel or Word files. Access to these files is restricted and not always available. The testing engineers may have difficulties in the working process, slowing down the whole operation and execution of the test cases.

Automation Testing Predominance

Software testing is the ever-evolving field of the market. It takes you to be ahead of the curve to capture the essence of the latest trends and eventually resonate with the core of your products through quality assurance.

Under this circumstance, Automation Testing emerges at the forefront of the software testing market, which can create and generate valuable assets for a firm.

The 8 promising prospects of Automation Testing include:

High yield of ROI

Consistent regression testing

Broad test coverage

Accuracy and Reliability

Faster pace

Developers and Testers unburdened

Reduce in Human Intervention

Records of measure quality metrics

The predominance of Automation Testing encourages businesses to transition from Manual to Automation Testing.

Check this out: How to do automation testing?

High yield of ROI

Perhaps the most important and impressive of Automation Testing is the high yield of Return of Investment.

To many business owners, the huge initial investment is an obstacle for them to implement Automation Testing. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the investment in Automation Testing is both cost-effective and time-saving in the long run.

Testers often examine the software when changes happen in order to monitor technical quality. Whenever there is an update in the code, the software tests should be repeated. It may be analyzed on all operating systems and hardware configurations before each release of the software, which is costly and time-consuming.

When created, automated tests can be function and run over and over again at no additional fee. Moreover, these are much faster than normal tests. Automated software test applications can shorten the time to run repetitive checks from days to hours. That means time and resources saved are converted directly into cost savings.

Consistent regression testing

Regression testing is the act of running old tests to ensure that the updated software hasn’t introduced or re-introduced bugs.

The process is vital as it ensures that the validated features continue to function properly.

Over time, the test suites built in this process will grow and the amount of repetitive work builds up.

Being able to automate this can save time and reduce the amount of human work dramatically. Decreasing the amount of manual work means decreasing human error, increasing consistency; especially when it comes to large sets of tedious repetitive work.

This also means that not only does automation test reduce the cost of running tests, but also ensures the quality of the testing process.

Broad test coverage

Letting machines do the work also means extending the scope and depth of tests to ensure software quality.

Automation tools can execute thousands of different complex test cases, providing coverage that is previously impossible with manual tests. They can look inside an application and check memory contents, file contents, data tables and internal program states to determine if the product is behaving as expected.

Even the largest QA departments cannot execute a controlled web application testing with thousands of users. However, automation tools can help simulate these virtual users interacting with the network.

This means the testers can cover more possibilities, have better understanding of how the systems work, and later improve their performance.

Accuracy and Reliability

In Automation Testing, the test runs in precision according to the predefined test scripts, thus avoiding many human-related errors such as incorrect data entry.

More importantly, Automation Testing supports the programming of more sophisticated scripts to generate accurate test reports, which Manual Testing is incapable of.

Thanks to the implementation of Automation Testing, the developers and testers are unburdened with timid, repetitive and tedious jobs, making it easier for them to focus on other aspects.

Faster pace

It appears that in every firm, the competition between firms not only revolves around the breakthrough of the product itself, it also depends on the time to market.

Faster pace with Automation Testing

With Automation Testing in hand, the outlook for a faster pace to put the product on the market is much more optimistic. Simultaneously, the constant pressure to release new features is also toned down as the regression testing can significantly speed up, thanks to the Automation Testing.

Developers and Testers unburdened

As in Manual Testing, the process and procedure always require many phases of tests. Accompanied with this is the work of the whole tester team, who constantly have to work under great pressure to release new products/features. Their work is timid, tedious and quite time-consuming. Sometimes, the scope of work overloads the capacity of one, exceeding the time allowance for the testing process.

With Automation Testing comes in handy, trivial and timid work like regression testing or performance testing can be executed with less headcount of manual testers, hence no more prolonged testing time.

Reduce in Human Intervention

As Automation Testing has become a tactic for firms who want to step in the game of information technology, the limitation in human intervention poses vast opportunities for speed and accuracy through the enhancement in the workload of the IT team.

With repetitive, menial day-to-day tasks, the testing process is at high risk of mistakes and bugs due to overworked and tired testers.

With the help of Automation Testing, the IT team will no longer have to endure the trivial tests and be bogged down by the repetitive tasks. Instead, they can focus on other tasks which require a higher level of knowledge and skills, hence eventually improving overall performance and productivity.

Records of measure quality metrics

The measure quality metrics in Automation Testing requires test writers to carefully consider the unique aspects of the environment and the application of the products.

With Automation Testing, metrics of the performances and functionality of the products are well-chosen and then stored in confidentiality for the later steps of the testing process.

Automation Testing is the on-trend way to go with the whole Quality Assurance process. Despite the misconception of the complete elimination of human touch in automation testing, manual testing is still of paramount importance for test cases and test scripts.

Perhaps the execution of Automation Testing is a cross between strategic manual testing and high-technological automation testing. It is a tough trick to pull off, but once you successfully employ Automation Testing, the outlook for better ROI and vast opportunities is broadened. It is just a matter of time for your firm to resort to automation testing for higher revenue.

Ready for your journey in digital transformation? Contact us now for the optimal solutions of Automation Testing. Just a few touches and your firm is fully prepared for the transformation from why Manual to Automation Testing with the support of LQA.