How can we reduce Test Cycle time using manual test execution?

Question

I'm working on a project where we will not use test automation in this starting stage, at least not until first stable build is released. As we are executing test cases manually, I need your help and tips on how to reduce the Test cycle time for using manual test execution.

Answer 1

Can you try:

• Analyze your existing test cases, see if there is any double-handling / overlapping.
• Break down your manual test cases into groups based on their priority and likelihood of being executed, always execute test cases with high priority first.
• Break down large test cases into smaller ones
• Review your test cases after each test cycle, if there are test cases that are not catching bugs, down-grade their priority and after a while, eventually remove them

Answer 2

There are few ways that you can try to optimize time and requirements.

• Create test plan that will cover core functionalities and make sure that this plan doesn't take more than half an hour to perform/execute, with these cases you will make sure that main functionalities are working properly.

• Divide cases into several modules and if development team is performing fixes, change requests or some alteration in code you will be able to quickly run test that are only affected by latest change.

• Create regression test that will go through all functionalities but without using edge cases, this test should be performed when there is time to check global project, but should be used as a best case scenario where you expect that everything works

Answer 3

Prioritize. Identify the core 20% test cases which covers the 80% base functionality. Remove redundants:Identify reduntant test cases/ test steps throughout the test suite.