Watch How to Focus Manual Testing Where It Counts

Manual testers are often left asking: What changed? What do I need to retest? Without clear answers, manual regression testing becomes broad, repetitive, and inefficient.

Test impact analysis (TIA) brings clarity by identifying exactly which parts of the application were affected by recent code changes—so testers can prioritize and validate with confidence. In this session, we show you how TIA helps teams eliminate guesswork, focus manual efforts where they count, and keep up with fast-paced release cycles.

Stop Wasting Time: Focus Manual Testing Where It Counts with Test Impact Analysis

Continuous releases move fast. Manual testing teams often struggle to keep up. In this session, Jamie and Matt from Parasoft break down how to be smarter (not just busier) with manual regression testing by using test impact analysis to focus efforts on validating recent code changes, enabling manual testing teams to reduce their workload—without losing confidence.

Key Takeaways

• Manual testing isn’t dead—it’s just getting smarter.
• Most QA teams lose time retesting everything to feel safe.
• Test Impact Analysis (TIA) uses data to identify exactly what needs retesting.
• TIA maps code changes to the right tests, so you skip redundant work.
• Teams feel more confident and less burnt out.

Manual Testing in Modern Software: Reality Check

First things first—automation, AI, and all that noise? Manual testing isn’t disappearing. If anything, it’s changing. There are still plenty of things a human eye, brain, and gut instinct catch that no automation or AI can. Think about user experience testing, exploratory work, empathy—these can’t be scripted.

But here’s the thing: traditional manual testing struggles to keep up with today’s agile fast-paced sprint cycles. To keep up manual regression testing needs to become focused and strategic. No one has time to run hundreds of tests just to be extra safe. Teams want to move fast and be confident, and that’s a real struggle right now.

Core Manual Regression Testing Problems

Manual regression testing has some big, obvious pains:

1. It’s Time Consuming
2. Priorities Can Be Unclear
3. Low Confidence in Did We Test the Right Things?
4. Tester Fatigue

Here’s a quick summary:

Enter Test Impact Analysis (TIA): What and How

So what’s TIA? It’s pretty straightforward:

• It tracks which pieces of code each test covers.
• When code changes, it figures out exactly which tests are affected.
• Instead of rerunning everything, you just run what’s needed.

Here’s the high-level loop:

1. Java or .NET coverage agents track code coverage during manual and automated tests.
2. Coverage data builds a mapping: which test hits which code.
3. When a developer deploys new code, TIA checks what changed.
4. TIA flags which tests are impacted and provides QA teams with a set of test cases to run.
5. QA team runs only those tests.

The result? Because the scope of test cases has been reduced to focus only those that have been impacted by the recent code changes, test cycles shrink on average by 70-90%.

Live Example: TIA in Action

Let’s say you work on a pet clinic web app with microservices. Parasoft’s demo uses coverage agents tied to each little service. Jamie and Matt walk through scheduling a pet visit. They:

• Run a test to check if visit scheduling works
• Make some code changes and redeploy
• TIA instantly tells them which test(s) need to be rerun

You don’t need to methodically plow through every single regression—just the ones the system tells you are at risk from those specific code changes. Nothing more, nothing less.

Tangible Benefits: Why TIA is a Game-Changer

Breakdown of the real gains, per Jamie and Matt:

1. Targeted Testing: Know exactly which tests matter. No guesswork, no safety blanket runs.
2. Saves Time and Effort: Fewer tests, faster cycles, less pressure.
3. Risk-Based Prioritization and Increased Confidence: If a change’s impact is clear, you trust what you’re skipping.
4. Better Agility: Teams fit testing into fast-moving sprint cycles—catch up, don’t hold back releases.
5. Test Suite Cleanup: Identify obsolete tests, clean out bloat, focus effort.
6. Improved Collaboration: Devs and testers have better conversations, everyone sees why something gets tested.

Nuts and Bolts: Set-Up & Common Questions

• Set-Up: Deploy a coverage agent on your backend (Java/.NET applications). Import manual test details from systems like Jira into Parasoft CTP. Once collected, data just flows.
• Can TIA spot obsolete tests? Absolutely. If something hasn’t been impacted in ages, maybe you don’t need it.
• Can it handle dependencies? Yes, with tuning. You can pick what to track.
• Works for multiple repos? Yep—especially with microservices.
• Supporting automation? Also there. Same agent, similar workflow, works for unit and functional automated tests (as long as you can get coverage data).

Wrapping Up: Smarter Testing, Happier Teams

Manual regression testing doesn’t have to feel like a hamster wheel. With TIA, it’s about working smarter, not just harder. Your team can spend less time clicking through endless regressions and more time on the work that actually matters. You hit deadlines, you keep confidence high, and the process feels more human.

Think about scaling, cleaning up the test suite, making testers’ jobs easier, and collaborating better with devs. That’s what it’s all about.