The world has always been interested in debating the trade-off between manual and automatic testing. It doesn’t require nine strange minds to understand the in-depth analysis which needs to go behind the decision of automating a test. On the other hand, the benefits and necessities of human interaction and manual testing are some heavyweights. When the world has agreed with the probe in the middle of manual testing, there is a burning need of some introspection within your testing approach followed by the testing team.
Here are the most essential suggestions to keep up your manual testing game.
Who fails to plan, plans to fail
The first and foremost step while perceiving a testing approach is to make the testing document or fix up a particular test design. It is imperative to bring the developer's development operation managers, testers and the product managers on the same lines of agreement with the test coverage of a suite being planned. That not only makes a far rigid boundary of the test coverage but also brings in some much-required visibility on the areas which are being thoroughly tested and the ones who will need a deeper penetration.
Automate the donkey’s work
If there is a set test plan which is analyzed to have no catches found, it is right up there to be automated. In other words, the test case which is being tested for 90% of the user profiles in exactly replicated instances, this surely needs to be automated to reduce the burden on human testers. Exports have always suggested maintaining a 5% rule for automation. It states that only 5% of the test cases should be planned to be executed manually.
Spare time from your timeline and keep it in the pipeline
Generally, the rush to reduce the products time to market makes the managers oversee and shrink the testing phase of any software development project. That is like cancer which can slowly kill the software and its overall performance over a period of dynamic changes and increased workload. The testers and the whole testing team should get ample amount of time to test out the whole software as thoroughly as they can. It should be noted that 78% of the projects in the IT sector field are due to miss-allocation of human and monetary resources for testing software.
Prioritise, systematically...!
Once the testing phase gets into billions of execution, it is quite important to manage and prioritize the test cases in the order of their importance. There needs to be a metric which considers the quality, and risks entailed with the frequency of testing for particular functionality. That should be very sincerely handled, and the process should be carried out with at most care to ensure total coverage of tests in shortest possible time.
Conclusion
If we wrap everything in a nutshell, manual testing can only be a shared success if the test designs are best documented thoroughly. There need to be a test pattern which is uniformly followed across all functionalities and the overall platform. The manual testing team leaders and managers should carefully analyze to automate the ball test as much as possible. That will have a direct impact on their ability to manage the test activities convincingly because they will have considerable scope due to reduced workload.
Once the activities are ruled out based on the test plan, the test cases should be meticulously prioritized based on the F4 mentioned features. This software management team would be in the best position to separate out a reasonable share from the budget to fund the testing activities most appropriately.