Automated Testing vs Manual Testing

Why do people prefer Automated Testing over Manual Testing?

Well, people do prefer processes that save them a lot of time and cost, and Automated Testing accomplishes this effectively!‍

But is that all Automated Testing has to offer?

No! Automated Testing has numerous benefits besides saving time and cost:

• By running Automated Tests, we can identify new bugs with less effort.
• Since Automated Tests are powered by tools and scripts, the chance of missing a bug or defect decreases significantly.
• Automated User Interface Tests detect and record changes in functionality across different platforms, devices, and browsers, in order to ensure that all the elements of the Front End work as expected.
• There is no manual alternative for testing load and performance. Automated Tests simulate hundreds and thousands of simultaneous users. For example, if you have a Food Buying App, you can automate a test that logs in multiple users at the same time, and checks if your Login feature can accommodate a large number of users without lagging.
• It is 70% faster than Manual Testing.
• It ensures consistency and we can have re-usable test scripts, that enhance speed and whatnot.
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Because of the countless benefits it has to offer, our Quality Assurance Team at Carte Blanche gives the utmost importance to Automated Testing. We make sure to write two types of Automated Tests, as soon as a new feature is introduced

• A Happy Path Test, that contains all the positive or valid inputs to the feature.
• An Effect-Related Test, that contains a User Flow which affects other features due to introduction of the new feature. This comes under Regression Testing, which ensures that the new code is compatible with the old one. Let's continue with an example of the Food Buying App! Suppose you introduce a feature to delete multiple items from the cart. However, due to this new feature, an old feature for deleting a single item is not working anymore. This issue will be sent back to the Development Team and they will try to fix the error. After the error is fixed, the Testing Team will test the App again to check whether the modified code has affected behaviour of the rest of the application. Hence, the effect of one feature on another is tested in Effect-Related Testing!

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But do we fully rely only on Automated Testing?

As we know, there are issues with Manual Testing such as:

• Manual Testing demands more time, resources, or sometimes both. For example, manually creating all possible test cases and executing them requires more time.
• Testers may miss out on some test cases, so we cannot expect better accuracy in Manual Testing.
• Executing the same tests, again and again, is a time consuming and tedious process.
• For every release, you must rerun the same set of tests which creates redundancy.

Nevertheless, we don’t fully rely on Automated Testing! Despite the broad coverage of Automated Testing and some major disadvantages of Manual Testing, we never underestimate Manual Testing! In fact, we test Software manually before we run Automated Tests. Since, there are some cases in which only Testers can think from the Users' perspective.

Even though we know Manual Testing requires much more effort, there is a checklist criterion at every stage of our review that makes it more manageable. It eliminates redundancy and ensures that every possible unique case is documented and divided into 3 categories:

1. Positive Test Cases
2. Boundary Test Cases
3. Negative Test Cases

By following this checklist mechanism, it is a lot easier for our QA Team to test manually!

Is Testing only the QA's responsibility?

Nope! Our developers also take 100% responsibility to provide high-quality code.

How?

Earlier, our developers were writing Unit Tests for the majority of our React components. However, we were lacking a 100% code coverage.

Therefore, now our Development Review ensures that all the positive, boundary and negative test cases are written, and we cover 100% Unit Tests for our every single component! Besides that, we write Integration Tests, to make sure, that the introduction of a new component does not break any other feature. By following this structure, our Coverage Report has increased by 20-25%!

Are you making sure all these Tests are written before your code passes? If not, you should know how important it is:

After following this mechanism, we realised how amazing it is to know that our code works according to every possible User Flow before even reaching the QA Team. For that reason, we have Unit and Integration Tests, that help us make sure our code works 100% visually and functionally, and you want that too!

What if we don’t do Testing at all?

If testing is not performed at all, there are risks, risks, and just risks! For example:

• Insufficient testing increases the chance of Developer complications.
• It increases Stakeholder disapproval, and most importantly, bad consumer experiences.
• There are excessive expenses and wastage of time that ultimately results in delayed product launches and therefore, impacts the product and the company's reputation.

Contrary to this, if careful, planned, and strategic testing is performed, these risks can be reduced to a great extent!

What we can do for you?

As mentioned above, at Carte Blanche we make sure to not bypass any feature without testing, therefore we apply both Automated Tests and Manual Tests as part of our Agile Development Approach. This enables us to deliver high-quality and bug-free Software products!

If you want to find out more about our services and how we use these in our process, feel free to contact us here: ‍https://www.carteblanche.tech/#services