Testing your new product, whether a website, software or mobile application, before it goes to market is an extremely important milestone in the development process. It helps you iron out the glitches and kinks, thus saving your business embarrassment and loss of revenue in case a defective version of the product makes its way into the market.
Traditionally, software testing was done manually by a team of Quality Analysts (QA team), who would manually run the product under development through various scenarios and simulate multiple users using the product on different operating platforms. A QA testing team could be maintained in-house or hired externally. However, test automation has made much of manual testing redundant, especially for test cases where manual testing is not feasible or becomes too labor-intensive.
Through Test Automation, execution of tests and comparison of results against expected outcomes is automated by running codes and scripts. These testing tools are generally specific to each product and test case but can be tweaked to have wider applicability as well. Automated Testing is often the safer, more cost-effective, and less time-consuming option, but not always.
Manual vs. Automated Testing: Which is the Right Pick?
Automated Testing differs from Manual Testing in certain key areas:
Apart from this, there are certain objectives that manual testing can achieve but automated testing cannot and vice versa. Similarly, certain test cases are better suited to manual testing than automated testing. Let us examine the key differences between Automated and Manual Testing:
There is no doubt that test automation helps achieve perfect quality at maximum speed. Automated tests can achieve more test coverage than even a large QA testing team can, e.g. simulate thousands of users simultaneously on a website or run the same test simultaneously on multiple machines with different configurations. Automated testing tools help you:
- Test faster
- Test substantially more code
- Conduct tests with 100% accuracy
- Focus on tests that actually require manual attention and human skills.
However, it may not always be the best solution for you. Test automation cannot handle complex test cases, nor can it help you with inputs regarding UI, UX, etc. Most often, therefore, the perfect test environment is an optimum combination of both manual & automated testing.
Here is where Fission Labs can help you. We, at Fission Labs, are experts in high-performance software product development & services, delivering high-end solutions to global clients by leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as Cloud, AI, Big Data, IoT, and Machine Learning.
Our solutions, targeted to highly scalable cloud applications and analytics for large data sets, are intuitive, customer-friendly, and effective. We focus on addressing your core business needs, whether we are developing for the web, mobile, commercial, or enterprise clients. Reach out to us today for a consultation with our team of veteran product developers.