Smoke Testing

Smoke testing in product management rapidly identifies critical flaws in a product's core functionality before extensive testing. Product managers leverage smoke tests to save up to 25% of development time by catching major issues early, ensuring only stable builds progress to thorough quality assurance phases. This practice significantly reduces the risk of releasing fundamentally flawed products to market.

Understanding Smoke Testing

Smoke testing typically involves a curated set of 20-30 test cases covering essential features. For a mobile app, this might include user login, basic navigation, and primary actions like posting or purchasing. Product teams often automate smoke tests, running them in under 30 minutes after each build. Industry standards suggest smoke tests should have a 99.9% pass rate before a build is considered stable enough for further testing.

Strategic Application

• Implement daily automated smoke tests to catch regressions within 24 hours
• Prioritize test cases based on user journey criticality, covering top 3-5 core features
• Establish a "no-go" threshold (e.g., 95% pass rate) for progressing builds to full QA
• Integrate smoke test results into CI/CD pipelines to automate build approvals or rejections

Industry Insights

Recent trends show 78% of agile teams incorporating AI-powered smoke testing tools, reducing test creation time by 40%. The rise of microservices architecture has also led to more granular, service-specific smoke tests, improving precision in identifying issues across complex systems.

Related Concepts

• [[regression-testing]]: Ensures new changes don't break existing functionality
• [[continuous-integration]]: Integrates smoke tests into automated build processes
• [[test-driven-development]]: Complements smoke testing with upfront test creation