Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is a type of software testing that verifies the basic functionality of an application to ensure it is stable enough for more detailed testing. It involves running a subset of critical test cases to check if the core features work after a new build or deployment. The goal is to quickly identify major defects early in the testing cycle, preventing wasted effort on deeper testing if the build is fundamentally broken.
Developers should use smoke testing after each build or deployment to catch show-stopping bugs before proceeding to more comprehensive testing phases like regression or integration testing. It is particularly valuable in continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to ensure new code changes don't break the application's basic operations, saving time and resources by filtering out unstable builds early.