Read This Informative Article to Understand the Differences Between Manual Testing Vs Automation Testing Along with Scenarios Where Automation Can be Used:
Software Testing is the process that is carried out throughout software development. It is the process of checking, verifying, and validating the requirements of the product. We are committed to providing quality products to the customers, hence we check the product functionality before its release.
Initially, testing was done manually, but in today’s world, everyone needs an easy life so why not testers? With this thought, Automation testing came into the picture and things changed drastically.
After the advent of Automation Testing, manual testers, and recruiters started getting worried about resulting job losses. Instead of just worrying about the effects of Automation Testing, we need to understand its benefits and to what extent we can use it for testing purposes.
This tutorial will show you how this evolution happened and where it will take us in the future.
Table of Contents:
What Is Manual Testing?
Manual Testing is the process of testing the software manually.
When we use human resources to perform testing then we can consider the testing as Manual. In other words, in this type, we execute test cases manually. The skills, knowledge, and experience of the testers play an important role in Manual Testing.
What Is Automation Testing?
The usage of automation tools for executing test cases is known as Automation Testing. It is a type of testing for which we need resources with the knowledge of scripting, etc.
Selenium, QTP, UFT are some examples of automation tools. Selenium comes with C#, JAVA, Pearl, PHP, Python, and Ruby. Hence having knowledge of any of these listed languages will work.
Why Automation?
Manual Testing has some limitations. Many times we have to do repetitive testing and doing things repetitively can be boring. Testing with valid and invalid inputs can make you irate. To err is human and when it comes to quality we just can’t compromise.
Time constraint is the most important thing when we talk about the release of the software. If development teams fail to complete the development process before the deadline, then the company loses customers and no one can afford this.
For Example, it could be time-consuming to test software with negative inputs.
Cost is the major constraint for any software development process. Maintenance costs can be a major issue for undetected defects. Automation comes into the picture to conquer all the above issues.
Enlisted below are a few pointers that justify the reason for using Automation Testing:
- It helps us to deliver a product with good quality.
- It saves time.
- It is beneficial to test the multilingual site.
- It allows us to test the software in multiple browsers.
- It does not require human intervention.
- It increases the speed of automation.
- It helps us to increase Test Coverage
- It helps you to generate the report for Test Execution, you just can’t modify it and hence it is useful for team lead/managers.
- By using an Automation tool we can record and replay test cases. For Example, if someone from your team is on leave or you want to access a record of test cases executed by the previous employees then this option is beneficial. Selenium IDE is the tool that allows us to record test cases.
Comparison Between Manual Testing Vs Automation Testing
Let’s see how these testing types are different from each other.
| Manual Testing | Automation Testing |
|---|---|
| Test cases are executed manually. | Test cases are executed with the help of tools. |
| Reliability is less. | Reliability is more. |
| It is less costlier. | It is more costlier. |
| For some test cases it consumes time. | As it is a machine it take less time to execute cases. |
| Human can make mistakes and hence accuracy is less. | Machine hardly makes mistakes(If it has been asked to do so). |
| As it include human intervention, it is beneficial to check ease for accessing the application. | It includes tools so unable to check usability or accessibility. |
| Using manual testing, it could be difficult to test the application on different Operating systems. | With the help of Automation testing, we can easily test the application on different Operating systems. |
| Sometimes it becomes difficult to execute all the test cases and it impacts test coverage. | In Automation testing we can achieve the test coverage target. |
| For Manual, it may find difficult test the application on different browsers. | Automation gives you advantage to test the software on different browsers. Selenium grid allow us to test the application on different browsers. |
| In this you need to sit in front of your system and execute test cases as it includes human intervention. | You just have to run Automation scripts you can run it overnight! |
| In this testing you have to make reports by your own. | Here tool will generate test case execution report. TestNG is the framework which will generate report for you. |
As there is a demand for Automation, it can be confusing to choose between Manual and Automation testing. Here, we have tried to clear this confusion. Automation also has some flaws, hence it is important to know them and then decide. We can’t automate each and every test case, in the next section, we have listed some scenarios which can help you select one over the other.
Scenarios Where We Can Consider Automation Testing
- We can consider stable parts of the application for Automation.
- Areas where we have to do frequent testing. For example, if you have to test some areas after each build.
- Test cases with the possibility of humans making mistakes should be considered for Automation.
- Test cases that need to be tested with a different set of data or a large amount of data should be automated.
- If there is any functionality that is having a high-risk condition, then it needs to be automated.
- Test cases that are unable to perform manually, For Example, Multilingual sites.
- Test cases that need to be tested with different browsers and different environments should be considered for Automation.
Next, let’s see the Testing Types that can be considered for Automation.
- Regression Testing: Automation is the best thing when it comes to Regression Testing, as it is repetitive testing after changing the code.
- Load Testing: We can go for Automation as it is suitable for it. It is the testing in which the system is tested under load to determine the system’s behavior.
- Performance Testing: It is done to test the performance and capability, hence we can consider it for Automation.
Scenarios Where We Should Not Think Of Automation
- Areas of application that change frequently should not be considered for Automation.
- Test cases that are executed on an ad-hoc basis should not be considered for Automation.
- A newly designed test and one that is not executed manually should never be considered for Automation.
Now, let’s see the Testing Types which can not be considered for Automation.
- Exploratory Testing: This is the type of testing where we need a skilled tester as the requirement specification document is not much descriptive. The tester needs to use his skills and knowledge to test the test cases.
- Usability Testing: While testing for usability, the tester needs to think like an end-user and check for the user-friendly nature of the application. Indeed a tool can’t think like a human being.
- Ad-hoc Testing: As the word, Ad-hoc itself tells that it is unplanned, a tester plays an important role.
Testing Types Where We Can Go With Either Manual Or Automation
- Black box Testing: It is a testing type where we just need to check the functionality. It does not require coding knowledge as it is not visible to the QA/testers.
- White box Testing: It is the type of testing where we deal with the internal structure of an application. It is also known as “Glass box testing”. It requires knowledge of code systems, branches, paths, conditions, etc.
- Integration Testing: It is the testing type where we link different modules and tests to see how they work together.
- System Testing: In this type of testing, we check if the application is working fine.
- Unit Testing: In this type of testing, we test a single module so that we can find a defect at the earlier stage. If we need to find a defect at the early stage, then we can fix it for sure. It is done by developers.
- Acceptance Testing: It is the testing type where we have to consider the user’s acceptance as it is done by the end-user. End-user will accept the Software only if the product justifies the requirements.
Conclusion
Testing is a huge domain and Manual Testing is still as important as Automation. There are many types of testing where the Automation tool can’t help us and we need to choose Manual Testing. Tool scripts are designed manually. The tool is designed manually, tools do not require human intervention but it requires the command which is given by a human.
Any machine or software is only capable of doing the things which were asked to do and this is the limitation (or sometimes advantage as it can not act smarter than us). Automation tools also have some limitations but eventually, they will evolve and will become smarter.
Both Manual and Automation Testing have pros and cons, and choosing between these two depends on the project requirements, time, and most importantly budget. Finally, we can say that when we require skilled testers we can go with manual testing and where we need to automate the test case, we should choose Automation.
Which one do you prefer? Manual Testing or Automation Testing?