How to Integrate Manual Testing Into Your Processes

Automation is just one part of effective software testing. To cover all your bases and make sure you are releasing the best software possible, you must include manual testing into your workflow. However, the advent of DevOps and agile development has increased the speed of deployment so much that you may wonder how to fit in manual testing without sacrificing the speed you've grown accustomed too. This article will share how you can easily integrate manual testing into your workflow at the speeds you are used to, with test IO.   

Automation and manual testing should work hand in hand because one will never replace the other. Or in other words, you can accomplish things with automation that you could not achieve with manual testing and vice versa. That's why teams should automate as much of the testing process as possible. Automation creates less manual work and helps bring the QA and the IT infrastructure teams together. Teams achieve this with the use of specialized automation and CI/CD tools. 

So now that you've automated what you can, let's discuss what you can't. In these three categories, the risk associated with failure to accurately test these pieces of your product is too significant.   

• Non-functional areas of your product  
• When your customer base is spread across various systems  
• Scenarios that weren't considered when scripting test cases  

In these situations, manual exploratory testing done by real people on real devices excels. Only real people can best emulate your users and the conditions they interact with your product.   

Now you know when to use Manual Testing. But how do you do it without interrupting your general workflow and slowing down time to release? Crowdtesting provides access to hundreds of thousands of vetted testers who are eager to test your application 24/7/365. At test IO, we've built out integrations so you can harness the power of the crowd where you are most comfortable: the tools you use to develop every single day.  

Currently, we offer the following types of integrations: bug export, comment synchronization, bug status monitoring, new test initiation, test case synchronization, and bug-fix testing. Bug export is available for all trackers. Other integrations may require the JIRA plug-in or customization. If we don't have a current integration for your development environment, we have a team that will work with you to make it happen.  

Automatically export bug reports from test IO to the bug tracker of your choice, where your developers can prioritize and fix them like any other bug reports.  

Keep comments in your bug tracker in sync with the comment system on the test IO platform. This allows your developers to ask testers follow-up questions directly.   

When bugs are exported from test IO, they are automatically added to your product's known bugs list. This list ensures that testers are only reporting new bugs for your future test cycles.  

When you mark a given bug as fixed in your tracker, test IO detects this and removes it from the known bugs list. Should the bug reappear in a later build or release, testers will report it.  

Based on specific criteria you determine, test IO helps you automate testing around new tickets or release milestones no matter how you organize your push-to-production pipeline in your project tracker. Currently, you can automatically initiate exploratory and test cases testing with test IO's API or through webhooks.  

When your developers fix a bug and mark it resolved in your tracker, test IO can automatically run a test case to ensure the fix really works.  

The integration sends the test result back to your tracker, approving the fix or providing information on the failed test. This works for both bugs reported through test IO or by your team.  

test IO allows you to plug manual testing into your workflow by integrating with Bug Trackers, Test Case Managers, CI/CD platforms, and even communications tools like Slack. In conjunction with test cycles that can return results in as little as an hour crowdtesting, you never have to worry about changing your workflow to accommodate manual testing. Instead, manual testing can work with you at the speed you work, wherever you work. 

If you'd like to see what this looks like in action, please reach out for a demo of our platform.