Better tests

No matter whether one is using black-box, white-box, or both types of testing, the order in which they are written is very important.

Requirements (specifications and user stories) are written before the code that implements them. They come first so they define the code, not the other way around. The same can be said for tests. If they are written after the code is done, in a certain way, that code (and the functionalities it implements) is defining tests. Tests that are defined by an already existing application are biased. They have a tendency to confirm what code does, and not to test whether a client's expectations are met, or that the code is behaving as expected. With manual testing, that is less the case since it is often done by a siloed QC department (even though it's often called QA). They tend to work on test definition in isolation from developers. That in itself leads to bigger problems caused by inevitably poor communication and the police syndrome, where testers are not trying to help the team to write applications with quality built in, but to find faults at the end of the process. The sooner we find problems, the cheaper it is to fix them.