Applied Software Project Management

Smoke Tests

A smoke test is a subset of the test cases that is typically representative of the overall test plan. For example, if there is a product with a dozen test plans (each of which has hundreds of test cases), then a smoke test for that product might just contain a few dozen test cases (with just one or two test cases from each test plan). The goal of a smoke test is to verify the breadth of the software functionality without going into depth on any one feature or requirement. (The name "smoke test" originally came from the world of electrical engineering. The first time a new circuit under development is attached to a power source, an especially glaring error may cause certain parts to start to smoke; at that point, there is no reason to continue to test the circuit.)

Smoke tests can be useful in many scenarios. For example, after a product has been tested, released, and deployed into production, a configuration management team member may manually run through a smoke test each time a new installation of the software is put in place at a client, in order to ensure that it is properly deployed. Another good use is to allow programmers to judge the health of a build before they give it to the software testers for testing: once a product has passed all of its unit tests, it may make sense to install the build and manually run the smoke tests , in order to ensure that it is ready for testing.

Unfortunately, smoke tests are often abused by senior managers or stakeholders who are ...