In a series of software testing related post, i am going to first give an introduction into what functional (QA) testing is.
Functional Testing
In the software development context, as name suggests, it is the testing of the functional aspects of a software application. Simple words, it is to test the software does functionally what it is intended to functionally do. Some people refer to this as Manual Testing — because you manually follow a series of steps to ‘test’ the functionality of the software that is in test.
Functional Testing can be done in a non-manual way too. This is known as Automated Testing — which as the name suggests, is an automated way of executing a series of steps to ‘test’ the functionality of the software that is in test. The opposite of Manual Testing.
Which of these methods should i use?
Personally i would advise you to utilise both Manual Testing & Automated Testing together. To bring the best of both worlds. It is good to have both in my opinion. Manual Testing is a proven method and it has been used in great effect in the past. It still in use today. More and more starting to use Automated Testing. However, not at the point where it replaces Manual Testing entirely. You still need that.
