What is Smoke Testing? : A Beginner's Guide

Testing is much more than a last-minute check before deployment; it is an essential foundation of success for any application. Smoke testing is a vital technique from regression testing among various other types of Web-based software testing that makes us sure about the stability of the builds so as to proceed with further levels of testing. 

In this simple and straightforward guide, you will learn what is smoke testing, why it is important, when to do it and the steps to perform.

What is Smoke Testing?

Smoke Testing, or Build Verification Testing is a type of initial testing which asserts the basic functionality of an application. Smoke testing is used for validating the stability of critical features before proceeding with detailed testing. The aim is to ensure that the most essential features are functioning properly and the build is stable enough to proceed with more extensive, detailed testing.

Why is Smoke Testing Important?

1. Early Bug Detection: Smoke testing helps detect the vital issues in the build early in time so that developers can fix them and testers don't waste a whole lot of time on more detailed types of testing.
2. Saves Time and Effort: Helps testers to not use time and other resources on those builds, which are too unstable where no further testing should be done as their basic stability has already been broken.
3. Improved Quality: Identifying defects at an early stage with a stable build provides a more stable and quality output product.

When is Smoke Testing Performed?

Generally, smoke testing in software testing is performed once a new software build has been created and deployed in the testing environment. It can be done at any of the stages, such as:

• After New Features or Fixes: Smoke testing checks if the build is stable and if the developers integrate a few of the new features or fixes.
• Before Regression Testing: Smoke tests are generally executed prior to running extensive regression tests, in order to verify any and all critical functionalities of the build are intact.

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Key Steps in Smoke Testing

1. Identify Critical Test Cases: Choose the test scenarios ensuring that they cover most of the critical operations on the applied side.
2. Prepare the Testing Environment: The testing environment must be rightly configured and truly similar to the software's live environment
3. Run the Smoke Tests: Perform the test cases selected while emphasizing login, database connection, navigation & brief workflows.
4. Analyze Results: Decide if the build is stable, or needs to fix critical bugs before performing more testing.
5. Report Findings: In case of failure, document the report and send it to the development team so that necessary actions can be taken immediately.

Smoke Testing Example

For example, maybe you are building an e-commerce site. So what does a smoke test look like for this site?

1. Home Page Load: Check that we can load the home page without error.
2. Login Functionality: Users should be able to log in and out.
3. Product Search: Verify whether users are able to search for the products.
4. Add to Cart: Test if items can be added to the cart.
5. Checkout Steps: Ensure that the users are able to go through the checkout process.

Tools for Smoke Testing

Different tools are available to accelerate the smoke testing process and make it an automated one. Here are a few that we see most often:

1. Selenium: An open-source automation tool extensively used for web applications to automate the smoke tests of fundamental features.
2. Jenkins: A continuous integration tool that itself can schedule smoke tests, as a part of the build process essentially validating if initial flows are stable.
3. JUnit/TestNG: Automation frameworks for smoke tests for Java applications, associated with unit and integration testing.
4. Postman: Good for running smoke tests on APIs by automating important API endpoints (validates if the basic functionality of the back-end parts is working)
5. Apache JMeter: It is best suited for performance and load testing but it can also run automated smoke tests—most simply for API or service level validations.

These tools let you automate smoke testing to ensure faster feedback and quicker detection of issues.

Suggested Reads- Top 10 Automation Testing Tools in 2024

Smoke Testing Results

The outcome of a smoke test typically falls into one of the following categories:

1. Pass: There are certain critical functions, if all of them pass the build is considered stable and can be subjected to further tests like regression or functional test.
2. Fail: A single critical function has failed, making the build unstable. If the result is not successful then there will be no more testing and the problems are sent back to development.

This allows the team to quickly determine if they want to move forward with running further testing stages or whether important issues need to be rectified in the build.

Diagram: Smoke Testing Process

Now, to depict the flow of executing smoke testing, Here is an ultimate simple flow diagram.

As illustrated in the diagram, it details how a smoke testing process flows ranging from starting a new build through to either moving prior to detailed testing (if all core functionality passes) and the bug reports back into development if key features do not pass.

Conclusion

Smoke testing is one of the significant aspects in software testing, when major problems can be detected early thereby assisting to maintain the stability of the build. Focusing on Essential Functionality — Performing a Smoking Test — In a Manual/Automated Way can Help Teams Save Time and Avoid Costly Mistakes While Ensuring Deliverable Software.

I hope this guide serves you well as a primer for smoke testing and how to effectively use it. Now, with frequent smoke tests, you are halfway towards good quality software.

Need Expert Help? 

Looking to implement effective smoke testing? F22 Labs provides comprehensive QA and software testing services to ensure your builds are stable and reliable. Our testing experts can help set up automated smoke testing processes tailored to your needs. Contact us today.

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