Nobody wants to find bugs in their application, especially not customers. This is why testing is a necessary step in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). It ensures that your application looks and functions as expected, maintaining customer satisfaction.  

There are two different ways to test an application: automated and manual. Read on to learn about each method, some common testing misconceptions, and how to get started with test automation.  

What is test automation?
Test automation is the implementation of an automation tool to execute test cases.  

This is well-suited for projects that are large or require testing to be repeated multiple times. It also could be applied to projects that already have been through an initial manual testing process.  

Not sure which test automation?  Click here. 

By employing automation, the tester can spend more time on high-value tasks. While this does require the tester to maintain test scripts, it ultimately will help increase application quality, test coverage, and scalability.  

What is Manual test automation? 
Manual testing is when a human tests the functionality of the software.  

To do this, the tester goes into the application and clicks through it in the way a user would. Manual testers also need to record their findings. This involves checking log files, external services, and databases for errors. It requires physical time and effort to ensure the software code does everything it’s supposed to do. 

After a while, this process becomes tedious and repetitive. However, the benefit is that the human mind can draw insights from a test that test automation could miss. 

Test automation means using special software for tasks that people usually do when checking and testing a software product. Nowadays, many software projects use test automation from start to end, especially in agile and DevOps methods. This means the engineering team runs tests automatically with the help of software tools. It will help to keep the testing team to make the process faster. Continuous delivery (CD) and quickly sends the new code to users. Test automation is important for this because it converts the manual steps into automation. Continuous integration (CI) checks the new code changes to prevent issues. CD gets after CI done everything well. Automated testing, CI & CD will together prove that the new code is error-free and ready for deployment quickly for the project purpose.
Automated testing tools cost too much money  
At first, manual testing seems like a less expensive solution than test automation. However, analysis shows that over time, automated testing actually can save your organization time and money.  

Manual testing doesn’t require spending money on a tool. But it does require paying a manual tester to spend hours repeating the same tests.  

Test automation can be run repeatedly, even when the tester isn’t there. It also increases test coverage and eliminates human error, reducing the number of costly bugs that leak through into production.  

Parallel testing is another way to see ROI from your investment in test automation. Rather than running individual tests one after the other, parallel testing enables you to run multiple automated tests at the same time. This cuts down on the time it takes to execute automated tests.