Smoke Testing – An Informative Guide on Smoke Testing

1. Smoke Testing Smoke Testing An Informative Guide on Smoke Testing

2. What is Smoke Testing and why is it important? Smoke testing has got its name from hardware repair systems wherein a smoke test is performed on pipelines to know whether they are working or not. Similarly, this smoke test is a quick test performed as a part of the software testing, to see if the application “catches on fire” when a new build is deployed and tested for the first time. This type of testing is also named as build verification or build acceptance form of testing. Specifically, this should be the first method of software testing that needs to be executed when once any new code deployment or code update is done for software projects.

3. Smoke Testing – ‘Verifies build stability’ The QA team is involved in the smoke testing process which is usually taken up in the QA environment which smoke tests whenever a new build is deployed. It tests whether all the test environment aspects are running successfully and whether the build is stable or not and justifies if the build can be used for further testing process. This testing method is designed to test core functionality of a new build and if the smoke test fails then it is very likely the build is immediately rejected by the QA team.

4. What is the scope of Smoke Testing? Basically, smoke testing is a rapid regression test of the major functionality and shows that the product is ready for further testing. With smoke testing method, most of the defects are identified at initial stages of the software development and helps in correction of these identified defects. With this testing method, the QA team can find defects to the application functionality and at times this testing method is also done by developers. If the smoke test is a pass then the build can be further sent to the testing process else the build is rejected.

5. When Smoke Testing is performed? This testing should take place at the beginning of the software testing life cycle. Smoke testing quickly verifies the quality of the build and evaluates the basic tasks whether they can be executed or not. This type of testing checks the stability of the code for each sprint with new code deployed. This testing method is executed before any detailed functional or regression testing is taken up as this testing process requires very less time to get an overview of the new code stability. In smoke testing, the test cases usually cover the most important functionalities of the system. The basic objective of this method of testing is not to perform exhaustive testing, but to verify that the critical functionalities of the system are working fine.

6. Important tips for performing Smoke Tests

7. Types of Smoke Tests Manual method: The smoke tests are run manually in this method of smoke testing wherein for each newly added feature, the scripts have to be updated or based on the need new scripts will have to be created. This is the most commonly used method for smoke testing. Automation method: Automation testing is also used wherein a set of automated test cases are used to run the smoke tests. With the help of automation tests, developers can check build immediately, whenever there is a new bug noted in the build. Hybrid method: This is a combination of both manual and automated testing methods which improves the overall smoke testing performance.

8. Smoke Testing vs Sanity Testing – Smoke testing is mostly used to check critical functionalities of a software build while sanity testing focuses on minor areas or minor functionalities. – Smoke tests can be performed either manually or in some cases can also be automated. But, typically sanity testing does not have any specific test cases or test scripts. – Smoke tests are usually carried out by QA team in the QA environment but in certain cases, it can be performed by developers, while sanity tests are performed by software testers.

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