On average, organizations dedicate about 15% to 25% of their total project budgets to QA and testing activities. It means that QA is the effective way to exceed the efficiency of the software project and to reduce the number of the issues in the production.

But why exactly does a project need a dedicated QA team?

Why do projects need a QA team?

A QA team ensures software meets requirements before deployment, prevents unexpected errors, and improves user experience. Here’s how:

• Validates software before major releases.
• Ensures compliance with quality standards before deployment.
• Identifies and resolves bugs before they impact users.

A Quality Assurance engineer helps to test your web site, mobile app, or even a game, and to find out the list of the bugs or to provide the suggestions for the improvement. So, the coding and the testing should be done simultaneously.

However, it can be challenging to hire an experienced QA engineer. The easiest option is outsourcing QA service, as it allows you to scale up without the headache of hiring people, without renting an office & paying full-time salaries, and it helps you to solve the various functional issues.

By the way, the Smartexe team has highly skilled QA engineers who have passed the ISTQB certification, so with us your project will be safe.

Why you should choose Automated Quality Assurance?

Automated testing includes scripts running and allows comparing the current state of the project with the expected results. It allows checking software for the correct work. The QA automation is better for big and long-term projects, repetitive tasks, functional testing, performance or load testing, Advanced GUI Testing. Here is the list of advantages of automated quality assurance.

Pros

• Detects bugs early, preventing costly fixes later.
• Eliminates human error, ensuring consistent quality.
• Automation has no limitations, so tests can be running 24/7;
• Reusable tests, perfect for frequently updated code;
• Processes vast amounts of data with precision.

Cons

• High initial cost due to setup and project-specific configurations;
• Less effective for short-term or small projects;
• Cannot detect UI/UX issues or user experience flaws;
• Lacks creativity, making exploratory testing difficult;
• Scalability issues, which may sometimes cause test failures.

Note, no matter how experienced automated tests are, it is impossible to automate everything.

So what type of testing is better, automated or manual? You should choose by yourself in each case. We created the list of questions that will help you to find the answer.

What is Manual Quality Assurance?

Manual QA involves testers checking software manually, ensuring it functions as expected and providing insights into real user experience — something automation cannot fully replicate.

Manual testing is useful during:

• Early development stages (for e.g. helps to find out the bugs in the interface).
• New feature testing.
• Usability and UI/UX evaluation.

Pros

• usability and visual analysis;
• ability for the small website fixes or the program updates;
• flexibility and adaptability;
• easy user integration and third-party integration for Jira, DevOps, and Slack.

Cons

• human errors while analyzing;
• labor intensity and high resourceability;
• dependence of the results on the type of report.

Manual testing is not enough to meet the current software development demands, so you will also need to perform an automated testing.

Which type of testing should you choose Automated vs Manual?

We prepare the checklist that helps you to choose the testing type.

1. Is your project still in development?
2. Have you run software testing before?
3. Do you need to speed up regression testing?
4. Do you have repetitive tasks?
5. Do you need to reduce the time for functional testing, like accuracy, interoperability, compliance, security, and stability?
6. Do you need to test performance under heavy load?
7. Are you performing ad-hoc testing without a written test case?
8. Is your project short-term?
9. Do you need to test visual elements or UI?
10. Do you need to see how your software or app responds to keypad entry?

If you answered “YES” to:

• 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 → Automated testing is the best choice.
• 8, 9, or 10 → Manual testing is sufficient.

There is no right or wrong solution for software testing, you need to select one type or both according to your budget or project size. In some cases, manual testing is not enough, and sometimes vice versa.

The perfect situation is when you use a combination of methods, so you can save time (due to investigation, automated testing can save up to 65% of time) and resources.

Need expert QA testing? Let’s talk. Our team at Smartexe is ready to help!