From Manual to Automated Testing: Tailoring QA to Your Needs

At COBE, QA is more than just finding bugs — it's about ensuring software meets expectations, delivers value, and provides a positive experience for businesses and end users. But how do we achieve this? The answer lies in both manual and automated testing — two approaches that can work separately and together to ensure software quality.

Manual Testing

Simply put, manual testing is when QA engineers interact with the app directly, simulating real-world scenarios, like entering data, clicking through features, and validating the user interface and the user experience. 

They engage with the app just like a real user would — exploring, experimenting, and making sure everything works as it should. What's so great about manual testing is that humans can spot issues automation might overlook, from visual glitches and usability problems to unexpected user behaviors.

What Makes Manual Testing Irreplaceable

The human perspective is essential for effective testing, especially when unexpected issues pop up. A great product isn’t just bug-free — it also needs to be intuitive, user-friendly, and practical in real-world scenarios. Manual testing ensures your app actually meets real user expectations. Here are some key areas where manual testers make the biggest impact:

• Exploratory and ad-hoc testing: Sometimes, the best way to find bugs is to just start clicking around in the app — no script, no plan, just pure curiosity. This type of testing can reveal some unexpected issues that structured test cases might miss.
• UX/UI and visual testing: A feature might technically work, but does it actually feel and look right? Only a human can judge whether the app is intuitive enough or if a specific design choice makes sense.
• Adaptability to change: In fast-moving projects where features change constantly, manual testing is more flexible than automation, spotting issues before they escalate.
• Edge cases & complex scenarios: No two users are alike, so we can’t expect every user to follow the so-called happy path. Humans think like humans — and that’s key to catching unpredictable workflows.
• Usability & accessibility audits: Ensuring an app is intuitive and accessible for all users, including those with disabilities, requires real human judgment.

The Downsides

As you can tell by now, manual testing is pretty flexible and adds a human element that can't be replaced. But it's worth noting that it has its own set of challenges, just like anything else. 

First off, it’s time-consuming and resource-heavy. When working on a large project, the need to execute tests step-by-step every single time can feel like a never-ending marathon. Also, if your QA engineers test across different browsers and devices, you probably know it can become a real challenge, taking up everyone's time and patience.

There’s also the human side of things. Even though QA experts are highly skilled and can catch unpredictable bugs automation may not; we’re still human, after all. Mistakes happen, and sometimes we interpret results differently, leading to inconsistencies. This is especially the case with repetitive tasks. When the QA engineers are running the same tests over and over again, it can quickly become tedious, which increases the chance of losing focus and missing bugs.

The good news is that these challenges can be tackled with smart testing strategies that create the most cost-effective approach tailored to your project’s needs. QA engineers know that bugs tend to show up in clusters, so taking a risk-based approach lets them focus on the areas that really matter first instead of testing everything equally. This is where a hybrid approach comes into play, which I’ll dive into later.

It’s Story Time!

Now, let me tell you about a time when manual testing saved the day. While testing a checkout process during UX/UI validation on one project, I realized automated tests had already given it the green light. They confirmed that the process worked as expected — the user could apply the discount code with no issues. However, what manual testing revealed was that applying and reapplying a discount code resulted in incorrect price calculations. Just imagine the complications for users if that app had gone live without us catching that issue.

This situation explains perfectly why manual testing is essential for new feature testing, UX reviews, frequent UI changes, short-term projects, and complex scenarios that require human judgment.

Automated Testing

Imagine having to manually click through every single feature of an app just to make sure nothing breaks. Sounds exhausting, right? That’s where automated testing comes in.

Automated testing uses scripts and tools to run tests without the need for human interaction. Instead of relying on human testers to repeat the same steps, automation allows us to quickly and consistently validate the core functionalities, detect regression, and assess performance on a scale. This results in speeding up the releases, minimizing the possibility of human error, and ensuring application stability as it evolves.

Best Test For Automation

Automation really shines through when tests need to be fast, repetitive, and data-driven — the ones that would drive a manual tester insane if done over and over again. 😅 They especially come in handy for:

1. Regression testing: Validates core functionalities after each update to ensure that a simple bug fix doesn’t crash the entire app.
2. Smoke & sanity testing: Confirms that the basic functions are working as expected before diving deeper into testing.
3. Performance & load testing: Simulates high user loads for scenarios such as Black Friday when the traffic is higher than usual.
4. API testing: Makes sure backend services are communicating smoothly — because one glitch can crash the entire app.
5. Data-driven testing: Tests various input combinations to prevent and avoid app crashing due to unexpected character combinations.
6. Repetitive & high-volume tests: Tests login/logout and search, which can be time-consuming tasks for QA engineers.

Automating the regression tests we run in every cycle really changed things for us. We've cut down the testing time, which allowed us to catch more bugs than before. Faster testing means we get feedback sooner and can release updates earlier each week. Plus, our team can now focus on manual testing where it matters the most, making our regression testing even more effective.

But here’s the thing — automation is not suitable for exploratory testing, UX/UI validation, one-time or rapidly changing features, and usability/accessibility testing because, as said before, they still need a human touch. Bottom line? Automate where it makes sense, but don't get rid of manual testers because some things only humans can see.

 Customizing QA for Your Needs

Testing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, so deciding which path to take for your project can be challenging. When choosing between manual and automated testing, you need to consider multiple factors such as:

• Project size and stability: If the app is rapidly evolving and it has frequent UI changes – manual testing definitely wins the case. It's way more flexible because updating automated tests takes time and can be costly. However, automation saves time and effort in the long run for features that don't change often.
• Test frequency and repetitiveness: As I already mentioned, repetitive tasks like regression testing, login flows, and API validation are ideal for automation to save time and catch more bugs.
• Time constraints: While automation speeds up execution for large-scale testing, manual testing is often quicker for ad-hoc exploratory testing.
• Budget and resources: Automation requires an initial investment but reduces costs over time, whereas manual testing is often better for short-term projects.
• User experience & business impact: Applications where usability is critical need thorough manual testing, while backend-heavy systems call for automated testing.
• Compliance & security requirements: Industries with strict regulations require detailed manual reviews.
• Existing tech stack & tools: The choice of testing tools largely depends on the client’s technology stack.

Finding the Right Balance 

The sweet spot? A hybrid approach. Mixing manual and automated testing allows you to automate the repetitive, time-consuming tests and leave usability, exploratory testing, and real-world user interactions to human testers. This way, you get the efficiency of automation without losing that human touch. Plus, having well-structured test cases helps keep things organized and reduces inconsistencies.

Quality Assurance: A Shared Responsibility

If there's one piece of advice I would give to teams looking to improve their QA process, it's this: Prioritize collaboration and communication between development, QA, and other stakeholders from day one.

Quality assurance isn’t just the QA team’s job — it’s a shared effort across the entire development lifecycle. When developers, testers, and stakeholders work together early and often, testing aligns better with your business goals, technical needs, and user expectations.

Here’s why this approach is so important:

• Bringing QA into the process early, even in the planning stages, allows testers to understand requirements, clarify expectations, and help shape the product design. This reduces the chances of issues being discovered late in the development cycle, which saves your budget and time.
• Quality can hardly be achieved in a silo. By keeping open lines of communication, teams can make smarter decisions about test coverage, automation, and issue resolution.
• Manual and automated testing work best together. Developers can assist in building automation scripts, while testers bring their expertise in exploratory and user-centric testing.

In short, fostering a collaborative mindset across teams leads to a more efficient, productive, and aligned QA process, ultimately resulting in better product quality.

At COBE, we know that great QA is all about balance. Manual and automated testing each has its strengths, and what's important is to know when to use which one. By strategically implementing a hybrid approach, our team can maximize efficiency, catch more bugs, and deliver beautiful user experiences for your projects. Whether it's the irreplaceable human touch of manual testing or the speed and scalability of automation, each contributes to your ultimate business goal. Technology will keep evolving, but the core principles of quality assurance remain the same: delivering value to our team and your end users.