Correct Task Distribution Between Manual and Automated Testing Departments

Critical issues between testing departments and a project group can arise due to numerous reasons but it’s always needed to rapidly put everyone’s efforts into reaching set goals.

Further, we’ll talk about the correct way to do this and the difficulties that you may encounter.

Who is the one responsible for it?

1. Should automated testers decide what needs to be tested or is this the responsibility of manual testers only?
2. Who is responsible for creating test runs — automation engineers or manual QA engineers?
3. What will happen with a process if an automated test fails due to some reason? Should a manual tester validate software performance or is this a task of a test automation department?

You should find answers to these and similar questions beforehand and there are no established solutions to them.

But you can take into account the following point of view: a professional automation specialist is in some way closer to a development team than QA engineers, therefore, manual testers themselves should be responsible for this.

All automated testers are actually focused on providing services by talking to manual QA engineers and giving them the most efficient automated result of their test scripts.

We should also understand that software test automation processes are total efforts to perform web testing so the decision on what should be tested and in what order should be made by each member of a quality assurance company where everyone can be responsible for their actions.

Forget about taboos in test automation

Some automated engineers think that if their work is perceived as something mysterious, strange, complex, and unclear, this will protect their positions from being occupied by someone else.

Sometimes they are very successful at ensuring manual testers who don’t have programming skills that this point of view is correct — and manual testers will believe in everything they hear from automated testers.

Such automation specialists can not only create the feeling of partial engagement but also some mysterious atmosphere around their job so that manual QA engineers don’t even try to understand this or influence general processes.

As a result, such behavior spoils the image of the total achievements of a whole team of testers.

What is the correct way to coordinate the work of an automation department and manual testers inside one team?

The best way to maintain good and efficient relations between automated specialists and manual testers is to discuss everything in a team on a permanent basis.

A list of common things that you can’t do without if both groups are aimed at working efficiently:

• You should ensure that testers work in a coordinated way, take part in everyday meetings and work on creating testing tasks;
• Manual testers and automated testers should work in a completely integrated environment where either automated tests or manual tests are executed. This approach will help QA engineers and other project group members see the entire work and understand what software parts are covered with tests, what are test results (both at the stage of planning and at the stage of implementation);
• You should do everything to make automation processes an efficient tool that helps a team of manual testers. A correct process is a key to good relations between automation and manual departments. If they understand that they should work together, they will rapidly focus on general issues and not pay attention to disagreements only.

Conclusion

So we gave a short answer to the question: how should we build correct coordination between automated and manual testers to promptly and efficiently achieve a set goal and also improve general infrastructure.