One of the first steps to ensuring the quality of the software product is the choice of the testing method used by your web app testing company.
By the extent to which additional software tools are used, testing can be:
- manual
- automated
Both approaches to software quality assurance can exist within a single project if the business tasks require it. But as a rule, different specialists are responsible for such testing.
Now we are going to talk about all the pros and cons of these two types of testing.
Manual testing
This type of testing allows the engineer to directly interact with the product and simulate the end user’s actions. And it gives an opportunity to investigate the UX aspects of the product. Manual testing helps to find bugs in business logic and design and provides real user feedback.
The main task of manual testing is to make sure that functionality works when all actions are executed according to a planned scenario. It may seem like manual testing is mindless keystrokes, but that’s an erroneous statement. While a novice in the field is not required to have a deep understanding of QA processes or the ability to write code, the tester has to come up with methods to verify product performance under a variety of conditions.
Manual testing remains the fundamental type of software quality assurance due to its advantages.
Advantages of manual testing:
- Speed. Manual tests are often used after the introduction of new options when it is necessary to quickly check their functionality.
- Research aspect. Testers search for possible bugs even in non-obvious areas of software or implement unexpected scenarios of using the product.
- A number of projects. Manual testing is the basic method of quality assessment, which is why there are many projects on the market aimed specifically at manual testing.
- User Perspective. In manual testing, a QA engineer can not only evaluate the correctness and accuracy of the code but also detect errors in the design or layout. Such user feedback forms a more accurate picture of the product’s problems.
Disadvantages of manual testing:
- Limitations in load modeling. Manual testing is a one-to-one interaction between the software and a person, which does not allow you to study the behavior of the program under large or expected loads.
- Human factor. Yes, human error is common, so even in manual testing, some bugs may escape the eyes of testers.
- Duration. Although manual testing allows one to carry out some pinpoint checks rather quickly, the whole process of manual testing is quite long.
Companies often choose manual testing, because it allows them to quickly and accurately conduct the tests. To guarantee the high quality of testing it is better to choose a specialized manual testing company, than a freelance specialist.
Automated testing
This approach is characterized by the use of specialized software.
An automator writes the scripts that replace manual testing. Testing of a software product is performed automatically according to a pre-written script.
Test automation is widely used when working on complex and multi-component projects that have advanced functionality.
Advantages of automated testing
- Load tests. Since automation allows you to simulate user behavior, this approach allows you to simulate significant loads on a system.
- The timing of the tests. Manual testing is performed by experts during working hours, but the autotests can be moved to evening or night hours when the load on the servers is reduced. This reduces the total time of a test.
- Repeated testing. Autotests can be run multiple times, which is useful when introducing new functionality.
Disadvantages of automated testing
- Speed. Running an autotest is indeed faster than a manual test. But preparing for automated testing and writing the scripts takes a lot of time.
- Coverage. Autotests are aimed at checking certain features of a program product, that’s why they cannot detect some defects outside the boundaries specified by the tester.
- User experience. Autotests don’t pay attention to inaccuracies and errors in UX. This means that without additional tests, the product will not be ready to go to market.
Automated testing generally is more expensive, So therefore we go for Manually Testing.
