QA Outsourcing: Smoke Testing, Critical Path Testing, Extended Testing
QA Outsourcing: Smoke Testing, Critical Path Testing, Extended Testing
Smoke testing, critical path testing and extended testing fall under the category of functional level tests.
QA outsourcing services basically include offshore software development, quality assurance testing, technical support, app integration and so on.
These three types of testing are named in descending order of priority. Also, the tests are classified by thoroughness.
But it is worth mentioning that there is no unified classification of testing processes.
Smoke testing (intake test, build verification test) is done to make sure that the most important functionality works as expected otherwise it does not make sense to use the application at all (or other unit that is subjected to smoke testing). Smoke testing is to be conducted every time after new features have been added to the software build in order to verify its overall quality and decide whether it is necessary or not to subject it to further testing, namely critical path tests and extended tests.
Performance testing companies run the tests that help to validate functionality and performance under expected workloads that can be gradually increased. They are unlikely to use smoke tests since these are carried out under a very low load.
To implement a smoke testing, there must be only a small set of tests developed and these are quite simple and oft-recurring therefore can be automated. Tests cases play a very important role in this testing level, so the metric limit often corresponds to 100% or about 100%.
Critical path tests are run to examine functionality exploited by typical users during their day-to-day activities. There are many users who usually exploit a certain subset of an app’s functionality which needs to be verified as soon as the smoke testing phase is successfully completed. Here, the metric limit is a little bit lower than that of smoke testing, and it corresponds to 70-80-90 % depending on the goal of the project.
Extended tests are performed to explore all the functionality which is specified in the requirements. Even low priority functionality is verified. At that, in this testing, one should understand which functionality is the most valuable and which is less important. Provided that you have enough time or other resources, tests cases on this level can be used for low priority requirements.
When you outsource qa you become relieved from many troubles relating to development of your product / project. All types of tests are conducted by highly qualified specialists, and this is the guarantee that your qa needs will be met.
