Are the automation test will replace the manual test?

Hi,
Some people maybe ask about this, “are the automation test will replace manual testing?” right? also me. I was curious about this until I underwent changes in the team regarding automation and manual tests.
Talking about the automation test, the automation test is a great thing. It is good to have in every software product; it cuts the testing time, makes it easier to do a considerable test, gets faster test results, and finds the bug faster. But how about the manual test, if we already have the automation team? are we still need it? Both have the Plus and Minus. Let's talk about it

Manual Test

In Theory, a Manual test is — testing the application manually by running the test cases without any automation tools to help them. The manual test also needs to identify the bug or issue in the application. In my perspective, every application needs to be tested manually before we transform it into the automated test since we need to check all the tests in the human sense and feeling, and also check worth or not to be automated, and at the software testing is not 100% can be transformed to the automation test.

Talk about the pros and cons, the manual test has Pros:

• Human sense and feeling— the application we made for humans, and we need to check the application from a human perspective. right? We never know how the application looks until a human tries it.
• Cheap — yup, the manual test is affordable as far as the project is a small or small application, not have too many updates. But if the project is huge, the manual test will cost a lot.

Cons:

• Human Error — again, about humans. as a human, sometimes we make a mistake, and we miss something to test, we miss a bug, and this will lead us to a bad application, and no one wants to use the application. but is not a critical thing because the great value of a manual test is higher than the risk.
• Hard to do repetitive — the repetitive test, with almost the same test cases, make the test feel boring, and if the test is a lot, it’s hard to do it repetitively; this will take our time.
• Expensive — ya if the test is huge, and we only do the manual test, it will take our time to do everything manually, and we need more resources to do the test and have to spend more cost to hire the manual tester — this is infinitely repetitive. And imagine how much the company will pay only for testing?

Automation Test

There are a lot of definitions of an Automation test, and I choose this:

Automated testing is the application of software tools to automate a human-driven manual process of reviewing and validating a software product. — atlasian

and additional definition from me, Automation test is the process of verifying a product application using software tools to make sure the product does what it is supposed to do.
The automation test transferring the test case has been created into the code with the purpose of making the testing faster, reliable, and repetitive; in other words, we support the testing. but Automated tests still have pros and cons, I will describe it:

Talk about the Pros first:

• Testing faster since the test uses the software — yup, the time of execution of the test is matter, faster test, faster result, and the users get the app with the faster version, and the product development team can do the faster bug fix or creating feature.
• Repetitive able — if the application has many updates, the automation test is highly needed in the testing process; as we know at the testing, we have the regression test — to make sure the new feature/update does not impact the existing feature. so with the automated test, we can do the repetitive test easily and faster.
• Less human error — since we are using software to run the test, it will make less human error.

Next, about the Cons:

• Hard to evaluate an app from the human perspective — yup, we still need the test application manually for some features that are not able to be automated. and also, if we try hard to automate all the features, we will forget that “the application is for humans.”
• Hard Maintenance — transferring the test case into the code test script is not the hardest part. We still have the hardest part, yup the maintenance. so we need to be very selective in choosing the test case that will be run automatically, worth or not to be automated. If the maintenance is harder than running the test manually, we should find another solution or run the test case manually.
• Expensive — at some job vacancies, hiring the SDET or QA Engineer is more expensive than the QA manual. But we can weigh the plus and minus points.

Conclusion

Both have pros and cons, so manual and automated tests should be collaborated to make a better application, and the automated test will not replace the manual test. A manual test will help the automated test and vice versa. We can weigh the pros and cons that I mention and make a decision. All can be tailored to the needs of the product.

Nb. in this article, I only talk about testing, which is a main part of the QA/SDET tasks. The QA or SDET is not only doing the testing, we are doing the creating of the test case, deciding whether the test case is automated or not, making the strategy to have a better test and faster test with valuable results, we do the planning of test execution, test reporting, research, also involving to make the application growing.

Thanks.