This month's author: Dom Tovey, Quality Engineering Management Consultant at Assured Thought.
With software development’s increasing automation, it might seem logical to view manual testing as something that should be becoming more and more outdated. Yet manual testers remain crucial to high-quality software delivery – especially in industries in which compliance, user experience and adaptability are paramount.
In this month's blog, Quality Engineering Management Consultant Dom Tovey explores the evolving role of manual testers, highlighting the vital human QE capabilities that no automation tool can replicate.
In a sector where automation-driven software development is often the focus, it’s easy to overlook the importance of manual testing. With the rise of sophisticated automation frameworks, continuous integration and DevOps practices, many are quick to assume that manual testing is a thing of the past. However, as someone deeply involved in delivery for a QA consultancy, I can confidently say that manual testing continues to take a critical role in well-rounded quality engineering (QE) frameworks.
While automation undeniably brings efficiency, scalability and speed, manual testers add a layer of human intelligence, creativity and contextual understanding.
Here's how I see manual testers fitting into modern QE frameworks – and why they remain essential in ensuring high-quality software delivery.
Understanding complex, context-driven scenarios
One of the greatest strengths of manual testers is their ability to understand and test complex, contextual scenarios that are difficult to automate. While automated scripts excel at repeating predefined tasks that offer a level of predictability, they often lack the nuanced flexibility required to handle unpredictable, user-driven behaviours.
Where user experience is paramount, or where products are being built for highly regulated industries such as finance (GDPR, MiFID II, CASS, AML), manual testers can evaluate the subtle, real-world conditions that automation may overlook. They can identify issues related to usability, design flows and user preferences that aren’t easily codified into scripts. This human perspective is invaluable, especially during exploratory testing – when intuition and experience are crucial.
The human touch in exploratory testing
Manual testers can excel in exploratory testing, which relies on tester expertise, creativity and domain knowledge to uncover defects scripted tests might miss. Exploratory testing involves testing without a predefined script, allowing testers to probe areas of the application that seem risky or fragile.
In a QE framework, exploratory testing provides opportunities to:
No automation tool can replicate this free-form investigative testing approach. In fact, exploratory testing often informs future automation by identifying new test cases that should be included in the automated suite.
Validating automation itself
Even the most robust automation frameworks are not without their flaws. Automation is code, and like any other code, it can contain bugs. Manual testers play a crucial role in validating the automation scripts themselves.
In complex projects, automation failures and false positives are not uncommon. Manual testers can step in to determine whether an issue lies within an application or is due to an error in an automation script.
Initial testing of new features
In fast-moving agile environments, new features are often built and delivered at a rapid pace. While automation plays a significant role in regression testing and repetitive tasks, the first line of defence for new features is often manual testing.
Ensuring compliance and accessibility
In highly regulated industries such as finance, ensuring software meets compliance standards (such as GDPR) is critical. Our manual testers bring deep knowledge of these regulatory requirements and can perform manual assessments to ensure applications meet legal and ethical standards.
Bridging the gap between development and users
Manual testers often serve as advocates for end-users, ensuring final products align with the needs and expectations of their target audiences. Manual testers’ abilities to evaluate applications from a user’s perspective – thinking critically about how real users interact with software – are vital in delivering products aiming to provide seamless experiences.
In QE frameworks that hold customer experience as paramount, manual testers help bridge the gaps between highly technical development processes and the real-world scenarios that users will encounter. Their feedback on usability, intuitive design and feature usability is often key in refining products for production.
Partnering with automation engineers
My final point – perhaps the most crucial one – is that in a quality engineering framework, manual testers don’t just exist alongside automation engineers: they partner with them.
Manual testers help define test cases that can later be automated, and their knowledge of the subject application’s edge cases will ensure that any and all automation suites are comprehensive and robust.
This collaboration is a two-way street:
Manual testing’s irreplaceable role in QE
In an era in which automation dominates the QA conversation, it’s crucial to remember that manual testing is not obsolete. In fact, it’s evolving.
While automation is helping to accelerate testing and reduce repetitive tasks, the human insight, creativity and contextual understanding provided by manual testers are irreplaceable in any quality engineering framework.
A well-rounded QE strategy recognises the strengths of both automation and manual testing. As software becomes more complex and user expectations continue to rise, manual testers will continue to play a pivotal role in ensuring quality, usability and customer satisfaction.
The future of quality engineering won’t be about choosing between automation and manual testing – it’ll be about leveraging the best of both worlds to deliver exceptional software.