In many software companies, the QA structure looks something like this:
- A manual testing team that designs and executes test cases
- A separate automation team that later picks some of those test cases and turns them into scripts
On paper, this sounds efficient: “Let the manual testers think about test coverage, and let the automation engineers handle the tooling and coding.”
In practice, this model often creates invisible gaps that directly hurt product quality.
I’ve worked inside this structure, and I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with it. Not because the people are bad or unskilled—but because the system they operate in is fundamentally flawed.
Let’s unpack why.
How We Got Here: The Illusion of Specialization
The split between manual and automation teams usually comes from a good intention:
- Manual QA: closer to the user, business flow, and requirements
- Automation QA: closer to code, tools, and CI/CD pipelines
Management thinks, “Let’s specialize, we’ll go faster.”
But in quality, specialization without shared context becomes fragmentation.
Quality is a system property—it emerges from how design, development, testing, deployment, and feedback all interact. When you slice QA into two disconnected units, you’re slicing the system view in half.
You gain local efficiency, but lose global understanding.
Problem 1: Manual Testers Don’t See the Cost of Automation
In the typical model, manual testers write test cases with the assumption:
“If it’s important, we should automate it.”
But they often don’t have visibility into:
- Runtime cost – How long does the full automated suite take? Is it minutes or hours?
- Stability – Which types of tests are flaky in this environment?
- Maintenance cost – How much effort does each additional test add to long‑term upkeep?
- Infrastructure constraints – Parallelization limits, environment setup, test data issues, etc.
Without this information, test design becomes one‑dimensional:
- “Is this scenario important?” instead of
- “Is this scenario important and worth automating, given the cost, risk, and ROI?”
This leads to patterns like:
- Trying to automate every trivial UI flow
- Designing test steps that are extremely detailed for humans, but painful for automation
- Ignoring the test pyramid and overloading the suite with slow end‑to‑end tests
The result: a heavy, fragile automation suite that nobody fully trusts.
Problem 2: Automation Engineers Become Script-Factories
On the other side, the automation team usually gets a backlog that looks like:
“Here is a list of test cases. Please automate them.”
Their work becomes:
- Convert steps into code
- Make the script pass
- Fix it again when it breaks
It’s execution without ownership of strategy.
Automation engineers often don’t have much say in:
- Whether the test case is even worth automating
- Whether the flow could be simplified
- How this test fits into the broader quality strategy
- Which risks are already covered elsewhere
They understand scripting, debugging, and CI integration—but not always:
- How real users think
- Where the true product risks are
- Which areas change frequently and will make tests brittle
- Which tests would be more effective at API or unit level instead of UI
So the automation team is treated less like “quality engineers” and more like “test script coders.” It’s a misuse of talent.
Problem 3: Metrics Drive the Wrong Behavior
This separation also tends to create misaligned incentives:
- Manual QA might be measured by number of test cases written/executed
- Automation QA might be measured by number of test cases automated
Missing metrics:
- Defects prevented, not just found
- Time saved in regression
- Stability of the main pipeline
- Confidence levels for each area of the product
When you reward quantity over impact, you get exactly that:
- A lot of test cases
- A lot of automated scripts
- But not necessarily better quality, faster releases, or higher confidence
The teams are busy, but the system isn’t getting smarter.
The Deeper Issue: Broken Feedback Loops
Quality improves when feedback loops are tight:
- Manual finds a pattern of bugs → informs what should be automated
- Automation reveals flaky areas → informs how we design tests and environments
- Both feed insights back to developers → design and implementation improve
When manual and automation are separate teams with different priorities and different meeting rooms, those feedback loops become slow or nonexistent.
People only see their piece of the puzzle.
The manual tester sees “I reported bugs and executed tests.”
The automation engineer sees “The pipeline is green (or red).”
But nobody is explicitly responsible for asking:
“Given everything we’re seeing—from production, automation, and manual tests—what is the smartest way to adapt our strategy?”
That “system thinking” gets lost.
Hybrid QA: From Test Executors to Quality Engineers
This is why I strongly believe every QA should eventually become hybrid—comfortable with both manual and automation.
When the same person:
- Designs the test strategy
- Executes exploratory tests
- Decides what to automate
- Writes and maintains the automated tests
…their perspective changes dramatically.
They start asking better questions:
- “If I design this test differently, will it be easier to automate and maintain?”
- “Is this scenario better as a UI test, an API test, or just a unit test from the dev side?”
- “Given the current risk profile of this release, what should we test manually vs automatically?”
- “Our regression suite already covers these flows—what’s actually missing?”
Concrete benefits of hybrid QA
- Smarter test selection
You don’t try to automate everything. You choose what delivers the most value for the least maintenance. - Automation-friendly test design
When you write test steps, you naturally think in reusable components, clear preconditions, and minimal reliance on unstable data. - Clearer regression picture
During regression, you know exactly:- What automation already covers
- Which areas are high-risk and require manual verification
- Where exploratory testing is crucial
- Better conversations with developers
You can talk about both:- How a feature should behave from the user’s perspective
- How it can be tested efficiently from a technical perspective
At that point, you’re no longer “manual QA” or “automation QA”.
You’re a quality engineer.
“But My Company Already Has Two Separate Teams…”
If you are currently a manual-only or automation-only QA, this isn’t a reason to feel stuck. It’s a roadmap.
- If you’re manual: learn basic scripting, understand how the current automation project is structured, observe which tests are fragile and why.
- If you’re automation: get closer to users, join requirement reviews, perform exploratory testing, understand where bugs are truly painful.
I’ve written a separate guide How to Start Learning Automation for Testers – The Quality Craft for manual testers who want to get into automation. That’s a great starting point if you’re coming from the manual side.
As for the company structure:
Splitting manual and automation might still work when the product is small and simple. The risk surface is limited, and the cost of suboptimal strategy is low.
But as:
- The feature set explodes
- Integrations grow
- Releases become more frequent
…you need a deep, unified understanding of quality. With modern Agile practices, manual and automation are not two phases—they are two tools used by the same mindset.
At some maturity level of the product, keeping them separated stops being “efficient” and starts being dangerous.
Looking Ahead: AI and the Blurring of Roles
If we look a bit into the future, with the rise of AI-assisted development and testing, I think the lines will blur even more—not just between manual and automation, but between developer and QA.
- AI can help generate test cases and test code
- Developers can own more tests (unit, integration, even UI)
- QA can focus more on strategy, risk, and system thinking
In that world:
- A tester who refuses to touch code will be limited
- A developer who ignores quality thinking will also be limited
So whether you’re a tester or a developer, having an open mind is crucial:
- As a tester: be willing to learn code, automation, and maybe even some production monitoring.
- As a developer: be willing to learn testing principles, risk-based thinking, and how users actually break your system.
The future isn’t “Dev vs QA”.
It’s people who understand the whole lifecycle vs those who only know their silo.
Final Thought
If you’re currently labeled as “manual QA” or “automation QA”, try not to treat that as your identity. Treat it as your starting point.
Quality is bigger than any one role.
The more sides of it you can see—manual, automation, dev, user, business—the stronger your impact will be.
And that’s ultimately what we’re here for:
Not just to run tests or write scripts, but to help ship better products with confidence.