The technological trend is changing at a faster rate than we anticipated. With this changing technological landscape comes the need to constantly update new and old systems for security, regulations, and market risks. For example, many financial companies have recently started moving towards offering cryptocurrency services, which are highly unregulated and volatile. Thus, companies need to incorporate robust software testing methods to ensure that their updates and new product offerings meet the industry standards while offering a seamless customer experience.

The standard component of software service includes:

• Application workflows
• Datastore and validation
• UX and performance
• Security and fail-safes
• Integrations and 3rd party dependencies

These services are offered to a large customer base, across multiple channels and devices, in real-time and at a 24/7 availability while also navigating compliances on privacy and data protection. It means shipping an application from start to finish requires efficient stakeholder management and robust component testing at every step.

To successfully test these complex software, companies have to rely on Test management or Quality Assurance software that offer both manual and automated testing solutions. Let’s discuss the goals and approaches for both the testing methodologies.

Manual Testing

Manual is all about testing the application using a manual approach. The testers use this process to identify issues, check core functions and find out areas that require deeper attention. The execution process has a high degree of flexibility and helps structure the next steps in the testing process. However, manual testing is a slow process that is hard to scale. It is important in the early development cycle as the test environment evolves quickly.

Manual tests were traditionally managed through spreadsheets and documents; however, using test management tools to keep a log of tests run and maintaining version control is the most efficient way to conduct manual testing.

Steps in Manual testing cycle:

1. Defining requirements of test on a document or test management tool
2. Create a list of test cases based on the requirements
3. Modify test cases based on outcomes and record results with detailed notes
4. Identifying issues that were not accounted for in the initial plan

Key aspects of manual testing

• Manual testing works better to execute dynamic and moderate scenarios.
• Manual testing’s primary goal is to explore avenues that require problem-solving and check essential functions.
• Manual testing is sometimes the only way to identify issues with the software, especially in the early lifecycle.
• Manual testing is slow and inefficient when tests are simplistic and need to be run in high volume.
• The quality of tests relies a lot on testers’ skills and knowledge.
• Manual testing can never be eliminated from the process, no matter how advanced the automation technology may become. Every testing procedure, whether manual or automation, will require manual testing for initial set-up.

Automated Testing

Over the years, as the complexity of software increased, test management through manual testing is not able to cover ground as fast as delivery requirements need it to. Automated testing helps ensure rigorous product testing quickly, at a low cost, and offering higher scalability. When code is updated frequently, test cases are required to be re-run even for the functions that were not updated. It is to ensure that the update did not affect existing functionalities ‘regression testing‘ should be run frequently. Automating such repeatable test scenarios ensures time-saving and better end-product quality with less time.

Steps in Automated testing cycle:

1. Defining goals, timeline, and requirements of the test results
2. Creating relevant test cases and checking the feasibility
3. If feasible, identify the right automation tool based on budget and need
4. Executing the test cases and analyzing reports of the outcome

Picking the right automation tool is an extremely important decision and must account for:

• The core and edge networks of an application, as they have different testing needs
• Industry, for example, BFSI applications will have different priorities over an e-comm or lifestyle application
• Lifecycle, established products will require more regression cycles compared to those in the initial development
• Reporting features, since they help reduced time spent in analytics
• Convenience, different teams should be able to adapt to the tool quickly

Key aspects of automated testing

• Automated testing reduces time, effort, and cost to perform tests required for regression testing.
• Automated testing requires an initial investment in software purchase and setting up the process, such as building the test case library.
• Automated testing improves product reliability by covering a larger set of test cases frequently.
• Automated testing cannot adapt to undefined variances and relies on the prediction ability of the tester.
• It is necessary to deploy automated testing tools across all kinds of applications, especially in the stages before the final release.
• Automation is necessary to run stress tests or performance tests.

Despite the differences in the approach of manual and automated testing, it is important to understand that both methods complement each other in refining the application. Manual tests are well-thought-out exercises that look for fundamental problems, discoveries, and learnings, whereas automated tests are mindless rigor that lacks decision-making but saves immense time, cost, and effort while offering accurate results.

Choosing an incorrect testing suite can cause several problems that snowball into millions lost in opportunity. Duplication due to redundancy, huge test backlogs, poor analytics, and lack of team collaboration features can slow down the entire development process in a growing competitive market. Data from many surveys suggest that many banking players are unable to meet new age requirements due to legacy systems and management tools slowing the system down.

Yethi’s test management solution for the banking and financial sector Tenjin by Yethi is a powerful test automation platform that supports a wide range of testing activities for banking and financial applications. It is built with a keen understanding of the space and requires minimal programming experience. With a diverse set of analytical and team collaboration features, it delivers high-speed operations with greater consistency. It is a 6^th generation, robotic test automation platform that allows you to build and maintain test automation while delivering accurate and efficient results every time.