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CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE WHITE PAPER:OPTIMIZING MANUAL TESTING WITH MERCURYBUSINESS PROCESS TESTING
 
About th Author ...................................................................................2Introduction .............................................................................................3Manual Functional Tsting vs. Automatd Tsting .............3Drawbacks to Manual Tsting .......................................................3Why 80 Prcnt of FunctionalTsting is Still Manual ....................................................................4Mrcury Businss Procss Tsting for Manual Tsting .....4Tst Dsign: Introducing th“Componnt” Concpt ..................................................................5Ky Faturs for Manual Tsting ..............................................5 How Mrcury Businss Procss TstingSmooths th Road to Automation ............................................5Manual Tsting Activitis at Raymond Jams ........................6Manual Tsting Challngs .........................................................6Who Uss Mrcury BusinssProcss Tsting and How ...........................................................6Rsults and ROI ................................................................................7Advic for Implmnting MrcuryBusinss Procss Tsting ...........................................................7For Mor Information ..........................................................................7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THe AUTHOR
Michael Warner is a Quality Assurance (QA) specialist in the Quality Assurance and Testing organizationat Raymond James, one o the largest inancial services irms in the United States. He and his QualityAssurance team help developers and subject-matter experts manage testing procedures or more than200 applications that are critical to the success and competitiveness o Raymond James. He has beenwith Raymond James or our years.
 
INTrOduCTION
Global 2000 companies continue to rely on manual testing processes or up to 80 percent o go-live eorts according to analysts; and mostshops still do not conduct any test automation at all. Yet much o the innovation around unctional testing tools and processes continues to beocused on test automation.There seems to be an underlying assumption that manual testing is a throwback—a necessary but ineicient practice that will one day besupplanted as technologies and processes mature and become more sophisticated. I hold a very dierent view, and I’m ar rom alone. Ibelieve manual unctional testing makes sense in many cases—both rom a practical perspective and rom an ROI perspective. I believe thiswill continue to be the case or many years to come, and that technology vendors should ocus on improving manual testing processes, not justtest automation.Mercury has proven to my satisaction that it is committed to delivering breakthroughs in eiciency or manual unctional testing as well asautomated testing—and easing the transition rom manual to automated testing
when that transition makes sense.
 This paper summarizes our experiences at Raymond James with what we consider to be a breakthrough product: Mercury Business ProcessTesting
™
. With Mercury Business Process Testing, our team o three QA engineers supports over 40 subject-matter experts and more than 100developers, and we have seen a 50-percent reduction in compatibility testing time. It has helped us optimize our testing and it has given us thelexibility to do manual or automated testing as we see it.This paper provides an overview o the product and how we use it, along with practical advice or those who are considering Mercury BusinessProcess Testing or optimizing their own manual processes or moving toward test automation.
MANuAL FuNCTIONAL TESTINg vS. AuTOMATEd TESTINg
The goal o unctional testing is simply to ensure that an application works as it should rom the end user’s perspective. Manual unctional testingcalls upon business analysts and testers to capture user requirements, prepare test plans, and document their interactions with the applicationin order to validate the sotware’s operations. Through test automation, unctional test scripts that have already been validated can be quicklyapplied to every application that uses that particular component o sotware, so more tests can be done in less time.There are many myths about both manual and automated unctional testing. Many people believe that test automation is too expensive relativeto its value; thereore it should be used rarely i at all. Others (such as agile developers) insist that automation o 100 percent o all tests is theultimate objective.There is no set ormula: The relative merits o manual testing vs. automated testing or your company will depend on many actors. The nextsections examine a ew o them.
drAwBACkS TO MANuAL TESTINg
While manual testing may be the best option or a high percentage o projects, it is not without its shortcomings. For example:• Manual testing relies heavily on ad-hoc practices, and there is oten no ormalization o processes and procedures within the QAorganization or across departments and lines o business (LOBs)—so individual team members are constantly reinventing the wheel.• Manual tests can simply take too long—testers have to tediously document each step o a test case and manually execute each test,reproduce deects, and so on.• The dramatic increase in complexity o today’s computing environments is ampliying test coverage requirements, creating more pressure tomove to automated testing.• Corporate globalization and geographically dispersed teams creates a need or standardized testing processes, which manual testing doesnot readily acilitate.
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