For more quality assurance teams, a common question is whether to use automated or manual testing for their software development efforts, and to determine what software testing tools are available.

For small projects, manual testing can be more efficient than automated testing because there is no need to create involved automated testing scripts.  For large projects, a combination of both automated and manual testing is a good approach.

Consider using automated test scripts for regression testing, as this can speed regression testing up considerably.   There are many automated testing tools available, http://www.redstonesoftware.com/ - Eggplant is a reasonably priced solution.

Teams will also perform manual testing, as it is a necessary component for quality testing.  With manual testing, it is imperative to ensure you have good testing coverage for all your customer requirements.  So being able to link test cases to customer requirements is a very nice feature from a software testing tool, as it provides traceability.

Good software testing tools also have the ability to track test cases online, assign them to testers, and allow them to pass or fail the test cases.  Auditing of the times a test case has run is a plus.  Some vendors that offer this level of test case management: http://www.defecttracker.com/ - Defect Tracker   http://www.softwareplanner.com/ - Software Planner