Optimizing Manual Software Testing: Survey, Guidelines, and Case Studies

This podcast investigates how to optimize manual software testing processes, which remain important despite the rise of automation. The authors conducted a survey of 38 testing professionals across 16 companies to understand current practices and challenges. Based on the survey, the paper synthesizes guidelines for implementing optimization techniques from automated testing to manual testing. These guidelines are structured within an annotated manual software testing process model and validated through two industrial case studies. The results demonstrate improved fault detection likelihood, test feedback time, and test creation efforts when these guidelines are followed. The authors propose that this offers significant value to the field by assisting developers and testers in identifying suitable optimization techniques for their manual testing needs.