7.2. Part Automation

Part automation is about trying to remove these repetitive tasks as much as possible. Manual testing is required for certain tasks; however, if you can automate the tasks around the manual testing then your production will increase. Common examples are automating the installation and deployment of the ASP.NET web application and database onto a test server so that it is ready for you to start testing. This saves you having to keep redeploying the application on every new build. This is a small thing and as such, people don't see the harm in manually performing the task, but during the lifecycle of the project it can really mount up.

There are also times when you can re-use the automation techniques discussed in the previous chapters to help get you to the point where you can manually test the application. This could range from inserting test data, creating test objects, or using UI automation to navigate you to certain parts of the application where you can begin manually testing a certain feature to ensure it is working correctly. By automating the easy, boring, sections you save time and motivation allowing you to only manually test the parts really required and leave the rest of the application automated.

Other techniques include automating the process of taking multiple screenshots and then manually verifying that they are correct. The hard work is being done for you; as a tester you simply need to verify that the screenshots are as expected. This is covered more in the section "Cross-Browser Testing," later in this chapter.

But when it comes to manual testing, there is more to it than verifying or breaking the application as we will cover in the next section.