Manual testing plays a vital role in software quality assurance by simulating real-world user interactions. This presentation covers the fundamentals of manual testing, its types (like black box, white box, exploratory testing), and a step-by-step guide to performing it effectively. Whether you're a beginner or a QA professional, this guide highlights how human insight complements automation to ensure usability, functionality, and user satisfaction. Perfect for QA engineers, testers, developers, and tech learners.

1. Manual Testing: Ensuring Software
Quality Through Human Insight
In a constantly evolving software development landscape, with an increasing rise of
automation tools, the importance of manual testing remains in any quality assurance (QA)
process. Manual testing allows testers to physically simulate users' experiences with the
software and verify that the software is functional, usable, and has no major defects. In this
blog, we will explore what manual testing is, why it is important, the different types, and
steps to complete manual testing correctly along the way, getting inspiration from industry
experiences such as what Global App Testing presented.
What is Manual Testing?
Manual testing is a software testing process where a QA engineer manually performs test
cases, without utilizing automated tools, automation scripts, or any automated means by
which to test the application. In manual testing, a person uses the application as the user
would and tests the different interfaces of the application, provides input and validation,
performs actions or workflows, and the tester checks to see if the software functions as
expected. This hands-on approach permits testers to locate visual defects, functional
errors,/usability issues, and other errors that the application has that automation or
automated tests may not detect. In some industry insights, manual testing accounts for at
least 80% testing effort in many organizations, showing the importance of manual testing, as
well as the ongoing survival of manual testing even when automation is advancing.
Why is Manual Testing Crucial?
Manual testing, while never going to be more efficient than automation for repetitive artifacts,
has valuable competencies that you cannot replicate with automation.
●​ Human Intuition: Testers can apply their UX and usability expertise to areas that
require human intuition, i.e., we can make judgments about whether a button being
placed somewhere feels natural based on the perspective of a human tester.
●​ Exploratory Testing: Manual testing allows testers to dynamically explore the
application to uncover unforeseen issues that weren't recorded in predefined test
cases.
●​ Cost Efficient on Smaller Projects: For simple or short-term projects, a manual
approach if typically cheaper than investment in creating automation capability.
●​ Good for the Early Stages of Testing: The flexibility inherent in the manual process
for software in its infancy, as it is still evolving with developers through continually
changing specifications, does not require updating the automation script.

2. Types of Manual Testing
Manual Testing involves several methods for assessing different levels of software quality:
●​ Black Box Testing: Testers verify the functionality of an application without having
any knowledge of the internal code. The testers provide input and then verify output
against the expected results. The testers simulate how an end-user would typically
use the application.
●​ White Box Testing: Testers have access to the internal code and can check code
paths and the accuracy of the design based on its underlying structure and logic.
This type of testing is commonly used for unit testing or integration testing.
●​ Grey Box Testing: This is a combination of black box testing and white box testing.
Testers have a partial understanding of the internal structure of an application and
test based on both functionality and coding. Grey box testing tends to work well for
system integration testing.
●​ Usability Testing: Typically covers how easy an application is to use, the interface
design of an application, and how easy an application is to use in its entirety based
upon end-user expectations.
●​ GUI Testing: This focuses on verification of the graphical user interface, checking
that elements such as menus, buttons, and layouts interactively function and satisfy
design specifications.
●​ Regression Testing: This verification determines if any new changes or bug fixes
have negatively affected any existing functionality.
●​ Exploratory Testing: Exploratory testing is arguably the least formal of the types of
testing. Testers engage with the application under test without a formal set of test
cases to follow. Engaging with the application is done with the aim to be creative as
possible, this creative aspect is what exploratory testing is all about.
●​ Compatibility Testing: Verifies that software performs the same and correctly
across technically different devices, browsers, and operating systems.
●​ Localization Testing: Mostly the language, culture, and or regional aspects ensure
that we can validate the application, "works" correctly in each of the regions.
Step-by-Step Guide to Manual Testing
To do manual testing successfully, QA engineers use a process that enables them to
investigate everything and provide correct defect reports. The following is a step-by-step
process:
1.​ Requirement Analysis
Read the software requirements specification (SRS) and project specification
documents to understand fully the application for its intended purpose, features, and
expected behavior. Communicate with stakeholders to eliminate any questions or
ambiguity.
2.​ Test Plan Development

3. Prepare a test plan that establishes boundaries along with the objectives, resources,
schedule, and environment for testing. This should provide guidance as a plan for
your testing.
3.​ Test Case Development
Develop test cases that also demonstrate all of the requirements, including positive,
negative, and edge cases. Every detailed case should outline the inputs, steps for
execution, and expected outcome.
4.​ Test Environment Setup
Prepare a representative testing environment with the correct hardware, software,
and network configurations so that it is as close as possible to what you would see in
the real world.
5.​ Test Execution
You will manually execute the test cases, act as an end user interacting with the
application. You will srool through screen, input data, take actions and features
according to the test scripts.
6.​ Defect Reporting
You will report any defects or anomalies along with the complete steps to reproduce,
what you expected to see, what you saw, severity, etc., for each. You could use a bug
tracking tool to document your defect, including Jira or Bugzilla.
7.​ Regression Testing
You would also need to regression test an area where the developers have changed
and corrected a defect. Confirm that the changes were effective and the fix did not
introduce a new issue in the same area.
8.​ Test Closure
You will finally prepare a test report documenting what was done during the testing
period, what the results of the tests were, and what is still outstanding. You can
officially close the testing process once you have met all of the quality criteria.
Best Practices for Successful Manual Testing
To ensure that manual testing works for you, adopt the following best practices:
●​ Prioritize Test Cases: It may not be possible to test all aspects of a system. Focus
on areas of high risk and critical functionality, and the highest impact test cases first,
to make the most of your time.
●​ Use Real Devices: Test on real devices and browsers to obtain accurate
compatibility and performance results. Services like BrowserStack can give you
access to a large number of devices that are all real devices.

4. ●​ Be Thorough with Documentation: Keep detailed documentation of test cases,
execution results, and defects so that developers can easily understand and act upon
issues.
●​ Simulate Real Conditions: Be sure to test under conditions that closely resemble
actual usage conditions. This includes varying device and network speeds, and
performing user-like actions.
●​ Combine with Automation: Use manual testing for exploratory, usability, and user
interface testing and automation where possible, for repeatable testing, to achieve a
well-balanced quality assurance (QA) approach.
Manual Testing Challenges
Despite the advantages, manual testing does include challenges and limitations:
●​ Slow: Manual testing can sometimes be stringent and leave less time for exploratory
testing. Completing all test cases manually, first time, can be time-consuming and
sometimes labor-intensive, especially for larger systems.
●​ Human Error: By its nature, manual testing is susceptible to oversight, especially in
cases of monotony and repetition.
●​ Scalability: As a project grows, manual testing may require many more testers,
longer testing cycles, and ultimately higher costs.
Conclusion
Manual testing is still an important part of software quality assurance, which will help to
inform automated testing. It looks at the software from a human perspective. Manual testing
emphasizes user experience, exploratory testing, and early validation. It ensures the
software will be reliable and intuitive once used in the real world. Following some of the
steps and best practices will allow the QA team to uncover numerous significant defects and
provide high-quality software for the end user. Organizations looking to balance efficiency
with accuracy should also look at balancing manual testing with automated testing, just as
quality assurance providers do.
Do you want to improve your software quality? Begin to incorporate manual testing into your
quality assurance process today and give your application the best chance at delivering a
user experience like no other!