pablocalvothe value of manual testing
manual testing and test automation are 2 IMPORTANT and completely different roles that should be part of almost every project!!
during many years of career, I have encountered many many times where a manual test engineer approaches with the will to learn test automation and move forward in his career. during many interviews as a qa automation engineer I have been “clarified” that my role will also include to do manual testing and then asked: Is this ok with you?
people tend to underestimate the value that manual testing provides for a team, even people working as test engineers do this. manual testing is not only having to execute a test check, create a test case or a requirement analysis. it is not just to go to all meetings. the job and role of a test engineer should be to be deeply involved in the product, business and technologies. you as a test engineer must be able to identify product and process pain points by executing different test analysis tasks.
along my job at HelloFresh, I have found myself digging uncountable hours into kubernetes pods logs to be able to identify a small bug bothering our stakeholder. I became the team’s north in terms of testing very complex processes involving several services. we are becoming a self-test team, in which developers are also responsible for testing each others work; this is the result of several test analysis done though each sprint and in an effort to improve teams overall quality.
I was initially hired as a test automation engineer, but after working in the framework for some months and getting it to a stable stage I realized that the team didn’t needed more automated tests. They needed a manual testing guy to help them be more successful and to bring test analytical thinking during our product and process meetings. so i became a test analyst instead.
I still strongly believe that every engineer in the team need to know how to code. you can’t argue me the opposite! but working as a test automation engineer should not be the next step up in your career. if you need to learn how to code then find an online course and do it. you will become more valuable and will value more your work as a test engineer.
but remember that manual testing and test automation are 2 IMPORTANT and completely different roles that should be part of almost every project!
cheers.
