What are the 5 Benefits of Smoke Testing, and How to Automate?

Smoke testing is considered to be a preliminary level of testing that makes sure that all the application’s basic components are functioning properly. It focuses on the major functions and does not delve deep into the finer nuances of an application.

Smoke testing also checks the build’s stability before it is moved to further levels of testing. In this article, you will get to know the five benefits of smoke testing and the process for automating it.

The following are the five benefits of smoke testing:

1. Troubleshooting regression bugs: If any bugs are found in the smoke testing process then troubleshooting work can be carried out earlier by the development team.

Root cause analysis can also be performed, rather than waiting for full test suite results. This is because of the shallow depth and high coverage nature of smoke testing suites.

The test suite can be considered as a sketch-mapping activity of the application’s quality. If it is a viable build, then QA can gain more efficiency if it continues with partial regression testing on that particular build, while smoke test bugs can be fixed by the developers.

After smoke test bugs have been fixed then after if there are any bugs found in the regression testing, then the developers can fix those also.

2. The productivity of the QA team is further enhanced: The potential amount of time and effort can be wasted by the QA process running a larger test suite, instead of easily discovering the issues through the smoke test. In this manner, time and resources are wasted.

Instead, the time and resources can be used for maintaining the automation toolset or performing other tests that are of significant value.

3. Show-stopping bugs can be detected earlier: As per research, if a smoke testing suite is configured and executed, then approximately 80% of the bugs can be uncovered and fixed at the earliest. Around 20% or less of all test cases are covered by smoke tests, but, still, 80% or more bugs can be caught. This in turn saves time to a great extent.

4. QA team’s effectiveness is increased: As there is increased progress among the QA team members, they will in turn strive to be more productive and have a higher level of job satisfaction.

They will be more certain of the fact that the higher-viability builds can successfully pass through the smoke test suite.

5. The build’s stability is verified: The QA team performs smoke testing to ensure that the deployed build is stable enough and whether it can be moved to further levels of testing or not.

Automating a smoke test suite:

In order to be purpose-built and efficient, an easily manageable number of tests should be contained in a smoke test suite that can be executed easily, even if it has been fully automated.

Around 20 to 50 tests could be a good range for performing testing. The preliminary test suite can be defeated by too much or too less coverage.

Following are a few criteria that need to be met by each smoke test:

• Only core features should be tested

• The test should be indefinitely reproducible

• The execution should be carried out at a faster pace

• Only a few or no false positives should be generated.

One of the best reasons for automating smoke testing is that tests will run more consistently and faster and return results automatically. There are many popular automation testing tools that are available and thus the team can decide which specific tool best suits their project requirements.

Conclusion: If you are looking forward to implementing smoke testing for your specific project, then do get connected with a top-rated software testing services company that will provide you with a viable testing strategy that is in line with your project-specific requirements.

About the author: I am a technical content writer focused on writing technology specific articles. I strive to provide well-researched information on the leading market savvy technologies.