Struggling to automate the QA testing processes on your software? Don’t worry! We are here for you. Our article will help you understand the best practices for combining manual and automation testing for QA test cases. We will also explore the strengths of both these processes and how they can complement each other for creating a robust strategy.
Due to the increased complexity of modern apps, changing user requirements, and a huge device ecosystem, it becomes very important to implement rigorous quality assurance processes. Although manual testing remains very important for multiple steps of this process, automation testing has become a very important ally.
Since both these processes are equally important, testers must understand their importance and create the perfect balance between both to create the perfect testing environment for their applications.
The Role of Manual Testing
It is a very straightforward process where a human developer evaluates a software application. This process mainly includes interacting with multiple elements of the app to find bugs, validate functionality, and assess the overall usability.
It is true that automation testing can cover most of the above processes but let us divert our attention towards some of the most important areas that require the involvement of human testers:
- Exploratory testing involves creatively exploring the app and discovering defects that automation test scripts will miss. It is very effective for identifying usability issues and unexpected bugs which will arise in real-world scenarios.
- Manual testing is also very important for finding visual aspects like color, layout, font size, and the overall look and feel of the application. In these areas, automation tools will struggle for verifying the visual aesthetics of the UI and UX elements.
- During the early development stages or when quick verification is required, ad hoc testing will provide immediate feedback without the requirement to configure and execute a complex automation testing setup.
- Various scenarios like mobile gesture interactions, voice recognition, or complex workflows require the vigilant and experienced human eye for assessing the troubles of human behavior. Manual testing will help a tester to respond to these unexpected results which is almost impossible to include in a script.
The Role of Automation Testing
Automation testing, compared to manual testing, will use various software tools to run predetermined test scripts without human intervention. It becomes a very important inclusion when you’re handling repetitive, high-volume tasks which require consistent execution across multiple devices, iterations, and environments.
Let us divert our attention towards some of the most important testing processes that will massively benefit with the inclusion of automation testing:
- Regression testing is possibly considered as one of the most primary use cases for automation testing. With frequent updates, it is very important to make sure that new changes do not break the existing functionality of your application. You can run these tests automatically after every build update to ensure this stability.
- Automation testing is also very important when you’re trying to verify the accessibility, load bearing capacity, and performance of your apps. You can also add various tools like LoadRunner and jMeter to simulate thousands of users interacting with your applications at the same time. This process will help reveal various performance issues and bottlenecks within the source code.
- If you’re working with tests that need to handle multiple datasets like form submissions, login credentials, or product orders, you can improve their efficiency by automating them. By implementing this approach, you can cycle through various data inputs without human actions and make the overall process quick and error-free.
- It is very important to ensure compatibility across different browsers and devices for mobile applications. Automation testing tools and platforms like Selenium and LambdaTest will allow the testers to perform this process across multiple platforms.
- Finally, when you are working in an agile and DevOps environment, automation testing will help you integrate the overall testing cycle into the continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline. This inclusion will, in turn, ensure that tests run every time new code is executed to maintain the quality throughout the life cycle.
Combining Manual and Automation Testing: Why It’s Important
Before we explore the processes of combining manual and automation testing for QA test cases. We must have a clear idea about the importance of implementing this process in the first place. Let us now divert our attention towards some of the major reasons that justify the integration of this process:
- Automation can quickly handle repetitive and large scale tests like load, regression, and stress testing, while manual testing will focus on specific exploratory test cases that require human involvement. The joint execution of this process across different testing levels will ensure the comprehensive coverage of the overall testing cycle.
- As you know, it is possible to run automated tests 24 hours round the clock, reducing the overall test execution time. This frees up the time for the manual testers, who can, in turn, focus on other unique areas of the application testing process. The combination ensures that you can better utilize the overall testing time without compromising the app quality.
- Using automation testing, you can reduce the risks of errors that can rise from human involvement to ensure the overall application consistency. On the other hand, manual testing uncovers various user experience issues that are usually overlooked by automation testing. So, together both these processes will help you create a safety net for high risk areas.
- Finally, automation testing can seamlessly adapt with CI/CD pipelines. This will provide a faster feedback for developers so that they can strategically use manual testing to add another layer of feedback. This is possible due to the assessment of areas where automation testing might not be enough.
Best Practices for Combining Manual and Automation Testing
Based on the market standards, application requirements, and varying standards of multiple app development and testing environments, we have created a comprehensive list of multiple best practices that can help you combine manual and automation testing for QA assessments:
Define Clear Testing Goals
The most important objective in this process is to clearly state your testing goals. You can begin this process by identifying which tests are better suited for automation and which require manual attention. We can consider the example of repetitive tests like regression that should be automated while exploratory testing which should remain under human testers.
- For the automation goal, you must identify tests which are reputable and time-consuming including verifying core functionality across multiple browsers or performing different tasks.
- On the other hand, to meet your manual testing goals, you must focus on tasks where human insight is very important. This can include exploratory tests, verifying user interface components, and analyzing various complex business logic.
Design Modular Test Cases
To ensure the proper combination of manual and automation testing, you must create test cases that are reusable and modular. This is because you can reuse modular test cases across different test scenarios which will help minimize the duplication and improve the overall maintainability of your test suite.
- In terms of automation testing, modular test cases will reduce the script complexity and also allow for easier updates when the code base changes.
- If you consider it from a manual testing perspective, modularity will help you in maintaining a structured testing process. This is because, in this step, the testers can focus on specific areas without losing track of the larger goal, the overall testing objective.
Combine Automation and Manual Testing for Continuous Improvement
You can improve your overall test coverage and quality by implementing a continuous feedback loop which will combine the results from both manual and automation testing. In this step, you should regularly evaluate the performance of both approaches to identify areas that can still be improved:
Want to implement a continuous feedback loop with both automation and manual testing? Simply follow the steps you have given below:
- Begin by continuously reviewing and updating the testing strategy to align with your company’s set business goals.
- Now move on to evaluating the test metrics for identifying gaps in coverage areas for optimization and other repetitive failures.
- The final step in this process is to use the results for manual testing for enhancing the automation test scripts or performing a vice versa approach.
Tools for Combining Manual and Automation Testing
Now that we have understood some of the major ways of combining manual and automation testing, let us focus on some of the most important tools that can help you in this process:
Selenium
Instead of being a standalone tool, Selenium is an umbrella test suite that comes with multiple tools that can assist you at different stages of automated web application testing. It supports multiple programming languages to make it a flexible option for automating smoke and regression testing.
The testers can also use Selenium to perform manual visual testing for verifying the proper functioning and placement of multiple user interface elements
Appium
Appium is the dedicated tool for performing automation testing on multiple mobile applications. Its reach starts from native mobile apps and goes all the way to hybrid mobile apps. Using a singular API, Appium can execute the QA test suite on various mobile platforms like Windows, Android, and iOS.
Using this tool, the testers can perform both manual and automated QA testing as per their testing requirements.
LambdaTest
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. Using this massive device farm, you can also perform automated cross-browser testing on your web applications to ensure compatibility across different browsers and versions.
It comes with additional features like comprehensive test reporting, native bug tracking, and live test reporting to further improve the efficiency and productivity of the overall process.
The Bottom Line
Based on all the factors that we discussed in this article, we can safely say that combining manual and automation testing is very important to deliver high-quality software at a competitive speed. While automation offers consistency and speed, manual testing offers human insight and creativity.
By creating the required balance and combining these approaches, teams can ensure comprehensive test coverage, improved efficiency, and a robust quality assurance process.
It is also important to remember that the most important ingredient to succeeding in this process is to understand the strengths of each approach, use the right tools, and continuously refine the overall testing process based on user and internal feedback. This is a very important process to not only achieve faster release cycles but also implement better customer satisfaction.