Decision to go with Manual testing or Automated testing depends on the current project situations:

1. Go for Manual Testing in the following cases:
   Unstable Software.
   To explore New Software.
   No Automation suite available.
   Adhoc testing (unplanned test cases).
   Not critical project & only one time testing & the effort required is less than the effort required for automation.
2. Go for Automation in the following cases:
   Stable Software.
   Any application with a High degree of risk associated with the failure is a good candidate for test automation. (Aircrafts Patient monitor )
   Testing needs to be repeated.
3. Advantages of Automation:
   Accelerate releases (reduces regression effort)
   With repeatable tests ensure consistency across multiple supported platforms
   Greater Application Coverage. Can test more often & more completely
   Convenient test reports for analysis

The factors that affect a manual testing project is as follows:
1) Requirements: If requirements are not clear then the test cases can never be clear. Because of which the execution gets affected.

2) Domain Knowledge.

3) Developers who have written the code of the application. The code must have been written in a very haphazard manner.

4) Guys with less knowledge of testing techniques.


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