Description
- Manual QA Testing Â
- Manual QA testing is the human-driven process of executing test cases to validate software against requirements and find defects.
- It focuses on functionality, usability, reliability, and conformance rather than automated checks.
- Common manual test types include functional, exploratory, usability, compatibility, regression, smoke, and acceptance testing.
- Test artifacts include test plans, test cases, test suites, traceability matrices, and defect reports.
- The typical test lifecycle: requirement analysis, test planning, test design, test execution, defect reporting and verification, and test closure.
- A good test case contains ID, title, preconditions, steps, test data, expected result, actual result, status, and evidence.
- Key test-design techniques are equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables, state transition, and scenario/use-case testing.
- Exploratory testing uses time-boxed charters and tester intuition to discover issues not covered by scripted cases.
- Risk-based testing prioritizes test effort by business impact and likelihood of failure.
- Shift-left means involving QA early in requirements and design to catch defects sooner.
- Manual testers manage test data, environments, and configurations to ensure reproducible results.
- Basic API testing can be done manually with tools like Postman to validate endpoints, status codes, and payloads.
- Manual testers perform accessibility checks, basic security checks, and performance smoke observations even when deep testing is automated.
- Effective defect reports include clear reproduction steps, severity, priority, and attached evidence (screenshots, logs).
- Use metrics like test coverage, pass/fail rate, defect density, and defect leakage to inform release decisions.
- Career growth moves from manual tester to senior QA, test lead, QA architect, or specialist roles (automation, performance, security).
