A Comparison of Manual Testing vs. Automation Testing

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A Comparison of Manual Testing vs. Automation Testing

October 12, 2022Blog, Software Testing

Hi there! Welcome to LQA’s guide on Manual Testing vs. Automation Testing comparison, their characteristics, applications, and when to use each method.

We will cover manual testing and automation testing differences in an infographic. But before going into details, we want you to be clear that:

Manual testing is the traditional and fundamental test method in software testing. We often use the manual method to test new products or when we don’t have a clear understanding of the products or when the systems haven’t become stable yet.
Automation testing is considered a high-tech test method in comparison to manual one. We often use this test method to reduce resources and time consumed for testing a system that is stably functioning and we already clearly know about it.

So, an ideal path is to use manual testing for the first time(s) and utilize automation testing to reduce test efforts and increase test productivity when things become stable and predictable!

Also, automation test doesn’t mean that the whole test process will be automated. Such steps like Requirements analysis, Test planning, and Test case design are done manually before a test automation engineer can program the test script and start automation test execution and test report.

That’s a quick look. And now, let’s go into comparison!

Manual Test vs. Automation Test Comparison

You may want to know: 6 steps to transition from manual testing to automation testing.

So, Manual Testing vs. Automation Testing – Which one is for you?

The answer of whether you should choose automation testing or manual testing depends on your situation. For example, choose manual test if:

Your product is new and you don’t have experience with this kind of product before.
The AUT (Application under test) changes frequently.
You have a limited budget.
You want to ensure user-friendliness in the product.
You want to handle complex test cases.
Your team doesn’t have the tech ability (for any reason) to set up and maintain automation.

And choose automation test if:

There are repetitive tasks in a stable-functioning system and you want to reduce these tasks.
When your system has frequent releases and you want to decrease test cycle time to speed up the processes.
You have a great budget for building automation testing.
You consider the test ability is needed in a long-term period.
You want better transparency of testing activities. Statistics and graphs about the test process, performance, and error rates are explicitly indicated.

Want to dig deeper into manual testing vs. automation testing and decide the one suitable for your business? Contact LQA now for a FREE consultation with our specialists and experts.