Overview
The First Line of Defense
Smoke testing is the most basic 'health check' for a build. It ensures that the system is stable enough for more rigorous testing.
For QA Managers, smoke tests are the ultimate time-saver. By automating these 'Happy Path' scenarios in the CI/CD pipeline, you prevent the QA team from wasting hours testing a build that is fundamentally broken at the login or boot-up stage.
Best Practices
Dos and Don'ts
Avoid common mistakes that can lead to flaky tests and maintenance nightmares.
What to do
- •Keep the smoke suite small (usually 10-20 high-value tests).
- •Automate smoke tests to run on every single commit.
- •Include critical integration points (e.g., 'Can the app talk to the DB?').
Common Pitfalls
- •Don't include edge cases in a smoke test.
- •Don't continue testing if the smoke suite fails—it's a waste of resources.
The Details
Smoke vs. Sanity Testing
A common confusion in QA is the difference between Smoke and Sanity Testing. Smoke testing is wide and shallow (checking all critical parts of the system broadly). Sanity testing is narrow and deep (verifying that a specific bug fix or new feature works as expected and hasn't made the system 'insane'). Smoke is performed on new builds; Sanity is performed after a fix is applied.