Are Automated Testing Tools Racing Ahead of Manual Software Testers?

Automated software testing plays a vital role in quality assurance processes.  It saves considerable amount of time and money, as it lessens the testing time duration by almost 70%. QA experts feel that such automated software testing tools could eventually pose a threat to professional software testers.

The procedure of software testing helps the developer to find all the possible errors in the program he has designed. Most of the Quality assurance software developers and test engineers opt for automated testing process, as they feel the success ratio is greater as compared to manual software testing.

Let us investigate the various advantages of automated software testing tools:

• Automation testing offers quality assurance results at fast speed and less cost.


• Automated tests adopts a consistent procedure, it performs similar steps of execution every time, thus reduces risk of errors by promoting accurate test execution, valuation and reporting.


• Automated testing help to conduct hundreds of complex testing of varied cases, it allows scope for greater depth in execution of tests.


• Automated testing aids in delving inside a software application to view the entire file data, memory files, data tables and minute internal programs.


• For cost effective and cheap development procedures, automated software testing is very useful.


• For example, automated regression testing helps identify all kinds of defects at a very early stage, thus lowering the cost for fixing the same errors at a later stage.

Manual testing professionals cannot give same attention to all other aspects of testing during a lengthy test procedure. With automated tools, you can easily run the tests without actually having to attend to those tests during the performance operation. Automated testing can be conducted on more than one computer at the same time and in numerous configurations settings.

Disadvantages of automated software testing

• It is unable to offer personal opinions or expressive impressions.


• It can just do mechanical repeated tasks and rigid form of testing such as unit, load and regressive testing.


• Automated testing tools are not very flexible in nature, therefore unable to process user experience testing records.


• Automated software tools cannot give judgments for any form of user interaction with a specific product.


• It is not suited for judging the impact of language or color layout of any product.

Manual testers add the core value in quality assurance

Professional software testers aid in creative designing and testing of infrastructures to meet their client needs. The testers work in association with other quality assurance engineers, so as to create and develop testing stratagem and guidance protocols. They pen down all test plans and execute them accordingly. Manual testers firstly identify what objects or applications need to be tested (manually or automation). For all this they continuously communicate and hone their analytical skills for getting successful results. Therefore, even for automated software testing; manual software testers are required to give the go ahead signal.

While the increasing requirement for software test automation may considerably reduce the actual presence of manual testers, there is ever increasing demand for test automation expertise and guidance.

Automated tools cannot perform without expert guidance

Many of the automated tools can be downloaded via internet for free. Those wanting a licensed authentic version of software testing tools can choose by comparing rates online. Every testing tool is designed to improve the existing business success ratio and business processes. Changes made by automated tools are again dependent on being accepted by professional software testers for implementation.

The LeanFT is a classic example of automated testing tool that has been developed to succeed the Unified Functional Testing tool. It can be termed as a valuable extension to UFT with features conducive to open source automated testing application for all kinds of web based programs. Selecting automated tools again rests on the manual software testers. Choosing tools depends on the kind of project assigned to the software team.