Because manual test script creation is, well, manual, organizations may not realize all of the benefits of manual test scripting in today's short development cycles. Typically, testing staffs use Excel spreadsheets (or, less typically, Word tables) to record testing steps, expected results, and pass/fail state in the required timeframes. They compile the results of testing either manually or with homegrown programs that import the Excel spreadsheets or Word tables, process the test results, and then produce reports.

But anyone attempting to use Excel spreadsheets or Word tables to manage manual test scripts will run into these problems:

• The need to constantly scroll horizontally and vertically makes these methods inefficient and difficult to use.
• The typically wide formats of Excel spreadsheets or Word tables and the need to reproduce headings on each page make it difficult to print reports.
• It's hard to organize scripts by grouping testing steps.
• There's no standard way to identify expected results within test scripts.
• There's no standard way to report test results.
• It's hard or impossible to reuse test script lines or groups of lines in different test scripts.

A tool that solves these problems would enable test departments to take full advantage of their enlightened decision to incorporate manual test scripts into the application development process.