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Software Engineering vocabulary · Testing

Manual testing

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, manual testing means: Checking software by hand, with a person clicking through screens and trying actions, instead of using test scripts that run automatically.

In Turkish: manuel test, elle test

How it is used

Still useful for new features, user experience and exploratory testing, but slow and hard to repeat. Teams try to reduce manual testing before each release by adding automated tests. You 'do manual testing' or 'test something manually'.

Example sentences

  1. Manual testing of the checkout flow takes the QA team half a day before every release.

  2. We can't rely on manual testing forever, so let's automate the login scenarios first.

Common collocations

  • do manual testing
  • manual testing effort
  • reduce manual testing
  • exploratory testing
  • automated testingUsing code and tools to run tests automatically and compare the results with what is expected, so they can be repeated quickly after every change.
  • QAShort for quality assurance: the work of checking that software meets its requirements and works well. It also names the people or team who do this work.
  • test caseOne specific situation you check, with set inputs, steps and an expected result, for example 'logging in with a wrong password shows an error'.
  • regressionA bug where something that used to work stops working after a change, such as a new feature breaking an old one.

More terms: Testing

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