Exploring 11 Manual Software Testing Techniques for Software Quality Assurance

Software product quality is a critical concern in the rapidly evolving field of software development. Software Quality Assurance (SQA) still heavily relies on manual software testing, even if automated testing has become more popular in recent years. A method of application exploration that automated tests might not be able to fully cover is provided by manual software testing. This blog article will explore some manual software testing methods that are essential to guarantee the stability and dependability of software.

What is Manual Software Testing?

As the name implies, manual software testing entails a human tester running a number of test cases to assess the usability, performance, and functionality of the product. With this interactive method, testers can investigate the behavior of the software in real-time and find problems that automated scripts could overlook.

What Are the Different Techniques for Manual Software Testing?

Hand testing is a crucial part of an all-encompassing quality assurance strategy since it has various advantages over automated testing.

Investigative Research

In exploratory testing, testers actively investigate the application by attempting various situations without the use of pre-written test cases. It is an unscripted, dynamic testing method. This method works very well for finding unforeseen flaws and usability problems. It’s a useful strategy for early defect discovery since testers use their intuition and domain knowledge to identify possible trouble spots.

Ad Hoc Examination

The spontaneous and haphazard way in which the tester tests the application is known as ad hoc testing. To focus on sections of the application that may be more error-prone, testers conduct test cases without following predetermined processes or documentation. Rapidly detecting important problems and learning about the behavior of the program in actual situations are two benefits of ad hoc testing.

Assessment of Usability

The user interface, navigation, and general user experience are all evaluated during usability testing to determine how user-friendly the software is. For the purpose of finding areas for improvement and making sure the program lives up to user expectations, testers mimic actual user interactions. Enhancing customer satisfaction and user adoption requires the usage of this manual software testing technique.

Testing Compatibilities

Compatibility testing guarantees that the program runs properly on various hardware, browsers, and environments. By hand, testers verify that the program works with different hardware, software, and operating system settings. Delivering a smooth user experience across many platforms requires the adoption of this method.

Checking for Security

Manually evaluating an application’s security features to find flaws and possible dangers is known as security testing. To make sure that private data is kept safe, testers look over the software’s data security, authorization, authentication, and encryption features. In order to handle complicated security issues that automated methods could miss, manual security testing is crucial.

Assessment of Regression

When working on smaller projects or certain scenarios, manual regression testing is useful even if it is frequently automated. Testers repeat test cases to make sure that upgrades or new modifications don’t break anything or adversely affect already-existing features. Throughout the software development lifecycle, manual regression testing contributes to the reliability of the product.

Examination of User Acceptance

End users validate the software during user acceptability testing to make sure it satisfies their expectations and business needs. Even though automated tests are frequently a part of UAT, manual software testing is essential in situations where a human viewpoint is needed, such as when evaluating usability and business logic.

Tests for Alpha and Beta

Providing the program to a small number of users in advance of its official debut is known as alpha and beta testing. Manual testers look for last-minute problems, collect user input, and evaluate the application’s performance. Using real-world usage patterns to adjust the software is a useful use of this technology.

Unknown-box testing

Software testing done “black box” or “unknown” means that the testers are not aware of the inner workings of the program they are testing. Software testers create test cases to make sure that the program generates the right output for a given input, as they are only aware of the software’s input and output. Because it focuses on the behavior of the program from the user’s perspective, black box testing is also frequently referred to as “behavioral testing”.

White-box evaluation

When software is tested using the “white box” approach, which is also referred to as “structural testing” or “glass box testing,” the internal workings of the software being tested are fully understood. To verify that the software’s code is accurate and adheres to the required design, testers create test cases. Code modules or individual code units are frequently tested using white box testing.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a comprehensive strategy for software quality assurance must include manual software testing methodologies. Human touch is added by manual testing service, which enables testers to investigate the software in ways that automated testing is unable to. Automated testing offers efficiency and repeatability. Software products with a high degree of quality, dependability, and user-friendliness are produced when manual and automated testing methods are used to provide a thorough and efficient quality assurance process.