What are Fears of Manual Test Engineers?

November 20 10:00 2014 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Automated testing became widely used. Almost every day appear new open code and commercial instruments for load testing, cross-browser testing, security testing and so on.

Many test engineers take advantage of the automated testing instruments and increase effectiveness of works by means of them. Some testers strike a warning note because of this tendency. They are afraid that soon they will be replaced by sophisticated programs and profession of a manual software tester will disappear.

A software testing company would confirm that in spite of rapid evolution of automated testing methods and approaches all testers’ work cannot be performed by computers.

The reason is that computers cannot evaluate applications from the perspective of the users and judge test results.

Automation will never replace manual testing completely. It is aimed at simplifying some activities, performing routine actions, shortening time needed on a software testing process. It is impossible to automate the whole testing process anyway.

Test Engineers are Needed For:

maintaining automated tests;
evaluating test results, making judgments, even if the tests are automated;
verifying usability issues, as the end-users are humans, not machines.

So, it is better to take automation as a useful instrument rather than a competitor. Combination automated and manual testing provides the best results.