Smoke Testing: How to Perform, Examples, Benefits & Types

Several techniques ensure applications work according to specifications before their release to the users. Amongst these critical techniques comes smoke testing, which is an important validation technique for the basic functionalities of a system. Knowing the meaning of a smoke test, its importance, and its role in the software development life cycle is fundamental for developers as well as QA professionals. In this direction, this technique proves to be an ace whenever it comes to catching crucial issues earlier in the process.

Moving on with this huge guide, we will attempt to explain what smoke testing is, how crucial this is, how it differs from other testing techniques that come in the form of sanity testing, and utilize real-life examples of this practice called smoke testing. We also want to outline how Appsierra has helped play a key role in delivering quality smoke testing services for you, ensuring your software builds are stable and functional.

What is Smoke Testing in Software Testing?

Smoke testing is an exploratory form of software testing. The central aim is to ensure that the critical functionalities of a build under test are working correctly. The tester runs a smoke test when a new build hits the market and checks whether the most necessary features, without which the software is dead, work fine. Smoke test definition is short testing, which essentially acts as a gatekeeper before going on to more intense testing in functional testing or regression testing.

That is, in simple words, the smoke test meaning refers to a check whether "smoke" comes out or not when the machine starts. If everything starts correctly and functions normally, then the build is stable enough for further testing. Otherwise, it's sent back to the developers with a request for immediate fixes.

Origin of the Term "Smoke Testing"

The term smoke testing comes from hardware testing. Engineers would just turn on a bit of hardware and see if it would “smoke”, that is if it was going to take an immediate, critical failure. If it passed this basic check, they would do more complete testing. This concept has since been adopted in software engineering, where smoke testing is the basic health check that newly released builds have to pass.

Key Objectives of Smoke Testing

• Identify Early Failures: The basic objective of smoke testing is to identify potential critical problems as early in the development cycle as possible. Failure at a smoke test would imply that a build hasn't been stable enough to support actual testing.
• Saves Time and Resources: Smoke test saves QA teams' additional details of testing when core functionalities of the software are not stable. It avoids redundant investment in the latter stages of testing on a broken build.
• New Builds Not Broken: Smoke testing ensures that new features or changes introduced into a software build do not break all the essential functionalities.

Smoke Testing with Examples

Let's take an example to understand the concept of smoke testing. Imagine that you are developing an ecommerce website. A conventional smoke test may include checking on whether:

• Users can sign in and log out.
• Items can be added to a shopping cart.
• Payment gateways perform properly.

These are critical functions that would determine whether the application is working. If any of these fail during the smoke test, then the build would have been declared unstable and returned for immediate fixes. Only after passing these basic checks would the build proceed to more comprehensive testing.

What are the Types of Smoke Testing?

Manual Smoke Testing

This is a type of smoke testing where a tester runs a set of predefined test cases to verify whether core functionalities are working accordingly. While this method is slower and more protracted, you have a tactile confirmation of the system. Especially useful for smaller projects or limited testing that automation might not be practical or cost-effective.

However, with manual smoke testing also the tester can apply his human judgment and intuition which is a plus to identifying certain bugs that an automated script may miss due to lack of logical support but can be tedious for large-scale projects where it has to repeat again and again making the process very error-prone.

Automated Smoke Testing

The test cases are automated by scripts in automation tools like Selenium, JUnit, and TestNG. This approach speeds up smoke testing, making it highly effective for larger projects or a continuous integration (CI) environment. This provides fast validation of new builds for core functions, without the need for manual input from dev teams. This is beneficial in Agile and DevOps workflows where the code changes are done at a high frequency as automated tests can be automatically fired with every build.

In the end, more automation also means a higher level of accuracy (i.e. way fewer opportunities for human error), and therefore this is a very scalable solution. Setting up automation frameworks from scratch can indeed take time to redesign processes independently, but the original cost of setup in these cases never fails since it aids speed, and accuracy.

An excellent best practice for Agile and DevOps teams is the automation of smoke testing, which allows rapid verification of new builds for stability levels that justify further testing phases.

When is Smoke Testing Performed?

Smoke testing is typically performed at the following points in the software development lifecycle:-

• After a New Build is Created: Smoke testing, on the other hand, is done by every developer during the production of a new build so that they will be sure that it's in a stable condition and that all important functionalities work fine.
• After Smoke Testing is Passed: After going through the smoke testing procedure, the build can advance to more rigorous phases such as integration testing or even system testing.
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment Environments: Smoke tests will be utilized here to quickly validate new builds before they go for production in CI/CD environments where code constantly forms and deploys.

Benefits of Smoke Testing

• Quick input: Smoke testing gives the development team immediate input. By immediately determining whether a build is stable, developers may resolve any critical issues before proceeding to more resource-intensive testing phases.
• Increased Efficiency: Because smoke testing is rapid and focused, it eliminates wasteful testing on non-functional builds. This conserves time, labor, and resources.
• Reduced Risk: By detecting big issues early in the development process, smoke testing minimizes the likelihood of severe flaws making it into production, which can result in costly solutions or reputational harm.
• Improved Collaboration in Agile and DevOps Teams: In Agile and DevOps contexts, smoke testing promotes improved collaboration between development and testing teams. It assures that new builds are stable enough to send to QA, resulting in more efficient operations.

Smoke Testing with Appsierra

Appsierra is the leader in software testing which provides smoke testing in both manual and automated manners. The vendor offers customized smoke testing solutions in a range of application types to ensure businesses receive an enterprise application from it, stable and fully functional, before proceeding on to more advanced stages of testing.

Appsierra values in smoke testing:

• Automated Smoke Testing Frameworks: Appsierra uses advanced testing frameworks like Selenium, Jenkins, and TestNG to automate smoke tests. This not only makes the testing fast but also ensures that the suite of smoke tests is run consistently at every deployment of a new build.
• Customizable Test Suites: Each application is unique, and hence its functionalities. A smoke test suite from Appsierra will be customized based on your application's most critical functionalities, so only the kind of functionalities you need are targeted by it.
• Experienced QA Team: For the task of ensuring that, wherever it is not possible or feasible to automate any test case, it shall be executed with the highest degree of accuracy through manual smoke testing, Appsierra employs experienced QA teams. Skilled QA professionals are efficient in pointing out major defects and giving development teams actionable feedback.
• Seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines: Appsierra's smoke testing services seamlessly integrate with the existing CI/CD pipelines of organizations that operate in the Agile or DevOps environments, enabling swift validation of new builds while only stable builds into production.
• Testing Services: Testing services provided include end-to-end testing services, besides smoke testing. It encompasses functional testing, regression testing, and sanity testing. Therefore, with a full-scale approach, Appsierra guarantees the best validation of your software at all phases of the development lifecycle.

CONCLUSION

Smoke testing is a critical activity in the lifecycle of software development, providing an early indicator of the build's stability and enabling teams to catch critical defects before they become major problems. To save precious time, reduce risks drastically, and improve overall software quality. Appsierra is thus a much-desired partner for every organization to elevate the effectiveness of their software testing processes with the help of advanced automation tools and highly experienced QA teams.

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