Manual Testing vs Automated Testing

Most often encountered problems in a company when it comes to testing is when to automate and when to manually test. Not all tests can be automated and most times is difficult to decide what to automate and what to manually test. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of both methods.

 

ADVANTAGES
Automated Testing	Manual Testing
• If you have to run a set of tests repeatedly automation is a huge gain	• If Test Cases have to be run a small number of times it's more likely to perform manual testing
• Helps performing "compatibility testing" - testing the software on different configurations	• It allows the tester to perform more ad-hoc (random testing)
• It gives you the ability to run automation scenariosto perform regressions in a shorter time	• Short term costs are reduced
• It gives you the ability to run regressions on a code that is continously changing	• The more time tester spends testing a module the grater the odds to find real user bugs
• Can be run simultaneously on different machines thus decreasing testing time
• Long term costs are reduced
DISADVANTAGES
Automated Testing	Manual Testing
• It's more expensive to automate. Initial investments are bigger than manual testing	• Manual tests can be very time consuming
• You cannot automate everything, some tests still have to be done manually	• For every release you must rerun the same set of tests which can be tiresome
OTHER FACTORS
• The performance of yout test tools
• The knowledge level of your testing team
• The continous growth of software to be tested
• Number of necessary regressions