Smoke vs Sanity Testin

• Consider a scenario, when after fixing defects of integration testing , the system is made available to the testing team for system testing
• You look at the initial screen , system looks fine and delay system test execution for the next day since you have other critical testing requirements to attend to
• Next day say you plan to execute the scenario login > View Balance > Transfer 500 > logout . The deadline is 4 hours.
• You begin executing the scenario , enter a valid login id , password, click the login button and boom you are taken to a blank screen with absolutely no links , no buttons & no where for you to proceed with succeeding steps of your scenario
• This is not a figment of any imagination but a very practical condition which could arise due to developer negligence, time pressures , test environment configuration & instability
• To fix this developer requires atleast 5 hours & deadline would be missed
• In fact , none of your team members would be able to execute their respective scenarios , since view balance is start point to perform any other operation and the entire project will be delayed
• Had you checked this yesterday itself, the system would been fixed by now and you were good for testing
• To avoid such situation sanity also know SMOKE  testing is done to check critical functionalities of the system before its is accepted for major testing. Sanity testing is quick and is non- exhaustive. Goal is not to find defects but to check system health