Smoke testing

Smoke testing quickly checks if a new software build is stable enough for deeper testing. Like checking if a newly repaired car starts before taking it on a test drive, smoke tests verify that basic functions work before investing time in detailed testing. 

If smoke tests fail, the build goes back to development. 

A typical smoke test suite checks core functions like: 

Smoke testing saves time by catching major breaks early. There's no point spending hours on detailed testing if users can't even log in. It helps maintain testing efficiency and gives quick feedback to developers about whether their changes broke anything fundamental. 

Teams often struggle to keep smoke tests lean and meaningful. 

It's tempting to keep adding "critical" checks until your smoke test becomes a full regression suite. Smart teams maintain a strict time limit—if smoke tests take more than 15-20 minutes to run, they've probably grown too big. Automation helps, but you need to be selective about what makes the cut. 

Smoke testing covers all areas of the software application without getting too deep. We decide which features to test. The goal is only to check they are working, not exhaustively test these features. Smoke tests need to be repeatable.

Smoke tests are used to find out if your build is stable enough to be tested exhaustively in a proper environment. Does your software start and keeps running? Is the web server and all remaining services up as expected? If it does reach the minimums, then it can’t be further tested, and development needs to look at immediately.

Smoke tests should be the ones you or the machine will perform for you. Having a good set of smoke tests can evaluate the stability of it. As more you may find in the advance about the stability of the SUT, better, as it will avoid unnecessary works afterwards.

If smoke tests passed, then you can perform sanity tests and all the regression tests (start with the automated "ones” - i.e. automated scripts/checks). Probably you have to decide which regression tests to perform…and here comes risk assessment: if you have to choose, start with by addressing the higher risks in the context of your build/release.

Smoke testing is an fast essential high-level, shallow form of testing that helps teams avoid wasting time on unstable builds. It checks whether the most essential functions of a software build work correctly. Often automated and triggered as part of a CI/CD pipeline to give developers and testers fast feedback when a new build is deployed.

While smoke testing checks whether the build is stable enough for further testing, sanity testing (link below) verifies specific functionality after changes to ensure bugs are fixed and nothing else is broken.