What should we rename "manual testing" to?

🙋 Questions
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1

What should we rename “manual testing” to?

Don’t hate me for this poll, but the topic came up and then MoT got tagged in a LinkedIn post. :sweat_smile:

What should we rename “manual testing” to?
  • :one: Testing
  • :two: Testing
  • :three: Testing
  • :four: Testing
0 voters

:star: Bonus points for not getting sucked into the debate

My opinion is to “ban” the term and encourage your team and company to call it ‘testing’.

It’s so simple! No more debates, let’s spend our time creating real change.

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2

You tricked me with the title :sweat: :stuck_out_tongue:

Totally agree! Let’s get rid of “functional tester” or w/e people call it!

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Let’s not rename it :slight_smile: it’s not important :wink: :raised_hands:t4:

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I also agree, it’s not that important because manual testing is and will always be manual testing :stuck_out_tongue: but the problem is people are looking ‘down’ onto the term and they think “test automation engineer” is a step up while it’s not, it’s a parrellel-growth path.

Perhaps renaming it to “Testing” as @rosie suggests in her poll :stuck_out_tongue: or perhaps something like “Quality Assurance Engineer” / “QA Specialist”. It means so much more then just being a manual tester, since our job isn’t about just manual testing but also the whole quality aspect such as shift left/right etc


And hopefully it will remove the looking down upon the “manual tester”

"I think this could be the catch behind the post :rofl: "

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There will always be different people and not all of them are smart and understand simple things :wink: Anyway, there will be people looking ‘down’ on people from the QA and testing field with different titles for different reasons :sweat_smile:

I almost always had the title of a QA Engineer (Senior, Lead, Team Lead) and now, officially, I have the title Sr. manual QA engineer but it doesn’t matter :slight_smile: I would say that tester in general isn’t the most common title, especially manual tester. Speaking about the term ‘manual testing’, in general, it’s incorrect but again in general we understand the meaning in the given context :slight_smile: maybe some people don’t but changing this term or titles won’t help them to understand stuff :sweat_smile:

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I generally agree with people arguing against “manual” adjective when referring to testing.

However, this thread reminds me that even in last month when talking with my team, I felt the need to qualify that I “manually” tested something. I think I need to try to be more conscious about it and try to remember when that urge appears - and then think what other phrasings might be more fitting in these specific contexts. Because clearly it does happen that I think there is added value in clarifying that testing I did is somehow different from some other types of testing that other people might have been thinking about.

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It’s not about the exact term. It’s about how everybody around us understand what testers are doing and how they can bring the value.

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tl;dr: “manual testing” means at least 2 different things to different people. One is a very reduced subset and the other is holistic one. Would be good to have 2 terms to differentiate that.

I see “manual testing” being understood in at least to different directions.

One is that I perceive some people having a reduce understanding what testing is about. Often its just about biological executors of scripts/manuals (this things with lists of actions and expected results).
Referring to differentiation of Testing and Checking from Rapid Software Testing I would say this usage of “manual testing” refers to “human checking”.

The other is anything besides automation, which covers explorative approaches as well.
Therefore I dislike the terms “automation/-ed testing” and “test automation”. Together with “manual testing” is see many people understanding a duality which I see not. (Automation is still a demanding thing on its own).

Testing is for me everything. Automation in Testing is a tool / specific approach. Not the other sibling.

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11

When I heard for the first time “should we manually run our automated tests?” I was done with the whole concept of manual and automated testing. Permanently :smile:

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