Role of Smoke Testing in Software Testing Life Cycle

Introduction

Smoke testing

Smoke testing is performed by the developer before the release of the build or by the tester after accepting the build for further QA software testing. After code-review or static analysis, smoke testing is the most cost-effective method of software testing quality assurance services for finding and fixing defects.

In quality assurance services, smoke tests generally a collection of testing that applied to newly created or repaired computer programs.

Smoke testing follows a shallow and wide approach to test the application. The purpose of the smoke testing is to determine whether an application is ready to go further testing. The designed smoke tests can either be executed manually or using an automated tool. When automated tools are used, the smoke tests are often initiated by the same process that generates the build the same itself. 

The points that summarize smoke testing:

1. Smoke testing is a shallow and wide approach which focuses on testing all application without getting into the deep.
2. A smoke testing is in the scripted form, either using a written set of tests or an automated tool.
3. It tests the basic functionality of the build.

Is it possible to perform smoke testing by using an Automation?

We can also perform the smoke testing by automation but in a different manner. With the help of automation, we can create a set of automated test cases the developer can easily check the build immediately whenever the new build has deployed on the server. The benefit of this testing with automation that developers can easily find the flaw in the build.

Instead of repeating the test manually using a smoke test. Using an automated tool, the software tester record all the manual steps in the build.

When to use smoke testing?

Smoke testing is used in such type of scenarios:

1. It is done by the developers before giving build to the testing team.
2. It is done by the testers before they start testing the detailed testing. 
3. Smoke testing is done to ensure the basic functionalities of the applications are working fine.

Example

In an e-commerce application, there are 15 modules are present out of 15 modules. Among them, 5 important modules like Create an Account, Login, Add to Cart, Buy and Payment Gateway.            

As a part of smoke testing, the user has to create the Account with the valid details after creating the account user performed Login application with the valid details. After login in the application will test the Product  Add to cart the product is added in the cart.

When the user performed the Buy action the product is displayed in the My order section.

When the user clicks on the Payment Gateway the payment gateway is shown and the user enters the details to purchase the product.

If all the 5 critical components are working fine then the build is stable enough to proceed with the detailed testing. This is known as smoke testing. Then we proceed the further testing.

Advantages of Smoke tesing

1. Smoke testing finding the bugs in the early stage of testing.
2. Smoke testing finding the issues that got introduced by the integration of the components.
3. Smoke testing helps in finding the issues that fixed in the previous build not impact the major functionalities of the application.
4. This type of testing is carried out in a little time so that’s why we use this type of testing.
5. A very limited number of test cases are required in this type of testing

Disadvantages of Smoke testing

1. Smoke testing does not cover the detailed testing we performed the shallow and wide approach
2.  Because of the limited number of test cases we are not able to find the critical issues in this type of testing tester test the major functionalities.
3. This type of testing not able to perform with the negative scenarios with invalid details.

Conclusion

A smoke testing to prevent the occurrence of any defects/failures in the next consecutive steps. Smoke testing is performed to test the major functionalities of the major modules.