Manual testing: human executes test cases. Click through scenarios; observe results.
Automated testing: scripts execute test cases. Faster, repeatable.
Manual wins for:
- Exploratory testing — try things, find unexpected behaviour.
- UX evaluation — does it feel right?
- One-off tests — too costly to automate.
- Complex scenarios — automation hard to design.
- Visual / accessibility — humans see things automation misses.
Automation wins for:
- Regression — re-run tests on every change.
- High-volume — many records, many runs.
- Integration — test cross-system.
- CI/CD — runs on every commit.
- Reproducibility — exact same test, every time.
In practice:
- Mix is typical.
- Automate the repeatable — regression, smoke tests.
- Manual for the new — initial test of new feature.
- Manual for exploratory — discover surprises.
Tools for Salesforce automation:
- Apex unit tests (built-in).
- Jest for LWC.
- Provar — Salesforce-specific.
- Tosca — enterprise.
- Selenium / Cypress / Playwright — generic.
Trade-offs:
- Manual: cheaper to start; expensive to repeat.
- Automated: expensive to start; cheap to repeat.
Senior QA insight: automation pays back over many runs. Single-use tests can stay manual. Everything else automate.
The senior framing: automation is leverage; use it for the right tasks.