The crucial features of the software are verified by the smoke testing process. The presence of showstoppers can be scrutinized, while the software is still under the testing process. The platform of the smoke testing process makes sure that the bugs or defects are detected and fixed in the early stages of the software development process. To further enhance the efficiency of smoke testing, it can be automated. In this article, you will get to know about applying smoke test automation for eCommerce.

What is smoke testing?

It is a specific software testing method that is conducted to ascertain whether specific software features are working as expected or not. It provides a sort of assurance to the QA team to move on to further testing procedures. On every software build, a specific set of tests is run to test different functions. It is also known as "Build verification testing."

Hence, smoke testing saves a considerable amount of time and resources before the development goes on with further testing activities.

The significance of automated smoke testing:

The number of test cases can vary depending on the scale and size of the application. For a high-end product, the total number of test cases can be on a higher note. In this scenario, it will take days for a tester to test manually. Instead of a tester doing the smoke testing task manually and taking days to complete it, the platform of automation can be utilized.

Through the implementation of automated smoke testing, the same testing task can be completed in much lesser time, thereby saving the development and testing teams' time to a huge extent. This in turn enhances the overall product development cycle process. Issues can be reported faster by testers and the latest builds can also be consumed faster.

There are specific tools available to conduct smoke testing in an automated manner. For example, PhantomJS, Cucumber, TestNG, Rest Assured, Selenium etc., are some of the tools that can be used to automate smoke tests. Test cases can be maintained by Cucumber or TestNG, Rest assured can be used for backend automation and similarly, for UI automation, Selenium can be used.

Conducting automation smoke testing for an e-commerce application:

For an e-commerce company, the most common user tasks would be check-out, add to cart, search, place order etc. When these paths are tested using the automated smoke testing method then users can be able to easily buy products or services from your site.

Following are a few benefits of implementing automated smoke testing:

·Effective scheduling: When a run fails, the team will be notified immediately, so that major bugs can be addressed before they affect too many users.

·Speed of execution: Once the creation of tests has been done, a button needs to be clicked, so that all the smoke tests can run simultaneously. Results can be obtained in just a few minutes instead of waiting for a longer amount of time.

The disadvantage of not conducting smoke testing:

If the QA team ignores the smoke testing process and does not perform it at the earlier stages of the software development process, then there may be chances that crucial issues can be found during the later stages of the software development life cycle process. This may in turn cost heavily for the team in terms of time, cost and other relevant resources.

The overall release cadence can be affected by this and thus pose a considerable threat to the overall product image. Hence, the smoke testing team should have a well-defined plan of action to carry out the smoke testing process.

Conclusion: If you are looking for professional advice on the automated smoke testing solutions that can be of real worth for your software development project, then do get connected with a highly acclaimed software testing services company that can provide you perfect testing solutions roadmap precisely as per your project 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.