Understanding Manual Testing in brief

Q1: What is manual testing?
Q2: Importance?
Q3: Types?
Q4: How to perform Manual Testing?
Q5: Advantages?
Q6: Disadvantages?
Q7: Tools?
Q8: Effect of manual testing/conclusion?

What is manual testing?
-type of software testing which involves manually executed test cases by tester without using any automated tools.
-it is a process of verifying and validating the functionality of an application to find whether it satisties the specified requirements.
-here you compare the expected behaviour with the behaviour of a developed piece of code.

Importance
-purpose is to identify the bugs, issues and defects in the particular software application.
-any new application must be always manually tested before automation testing.
-manual testing does not require knowledge of any testing tool.
-this process plays vital importance in testing, because according to one of the testing fundamentals which states that "pure automation testing is never possible"
-manual testing also makes sure that reported defects are fixed by developers and re-testing has been performed by testers on them.

Types

1. Black Box Testing
2. White Box Testing
3. Unit Testing
4. System Testing
5. Integration Testing
6. Acceptance Testing

(types will be explained in upcoming post)

How to perform Manual Testing

1. read and understand the software project documentation/AUT i.e. Application Under Test
2. draft test cases that cover all the requirements mentioned in the first step.
3. review the baseline
4. execute test cases on the AUT
5. report bugs if any
6. if step 5 is executed then, perform testing on failing test cases to verify they pass

Advantages
-does not require knowledge of coding
-used to test dynamically changing GUI designs
-since the tester interacts with the software as a real user, they are able to discover usability and user interface issues.
-it ensures pure i.e. bug-free software.
-cost-effective

Disadvantages
-time-consuming
-require a large number of human resources
-can't reuse test cases for a different software

Tools
-since manual testing involves many other types of testing, there are some tools that can be used to test the software depending on the type of testing.
-For example Jira, LoadRunner, Bugzilla, Mantis, Zap, NUnit, Tessy, Citrus, SonarQube, etc.

Effect of manual testing/conclusion?
-to perform testing, one needs to be creative, patient and open-minded.
-effective user interface is majorly acquired in manual testing.
-to perform manual testing, one should think like end-user.