A sanity test is a preliminary assessment that is deployed to determine whether or not a software application or system is ready for further testing. The sanity testing process focuses on verifying the functionalities after any changes or fixes are made . The goal is to ensure that these functionalities still work as expected and the application or system is stable enough to move on to more comprehensive testing.

Unlike more rigorous tests, sanity tests are superficial; they simply detect any major issues early on in the development lifecycle to help you save coveted time and resources. This way, you can make any easy fixes rather than going on to test a fundamentally flawed application or system.

What Is Sanity Testing?

Sanity testing, a subset of regression testing, acts as a cursory check. It targets key areas of an application or system, focusing on its functionalities. In short, a sanity test verifies that the functions work as intended before the application or system moves on to more exhaustive testing.

Purpose and Scope

Sometimes, when a team fixes a particular function or makes modifications to software, they might break or interfere with another function. Testing is important to make sure that any changes made to one aspect of the software don’t adversely affect another aspect of it.

You should perform sanity testing throughout the development cycle to ensure that a specific function or particular section of the software works as intended—especially after any modifications or fixes. It is essentially a quick check to make sure that all critical features function correctly before forging forward.

It’s important to understand that a sanity check is not about comprehensive testing; rather, it’s about confirming that the software is ready for comprehensive testing. By concentrating on specific areas within a limited testing scope, a sanity check can efficiently identify any potential issues.

Key Characteristics

Sanity tests are distinguishable by a few key characteristics:

• Narrow scope
• A focus on specific functionalities or sections of the software
• Quick execution time
• Non-scripted nation (no detailed test scripts or predefined test cases)
• Basic validation that recent changes or fixes haven’t caused major issues

• Informal approach

When to Use a Sanity Test

There are various use cases for a sanity test. Here are some of the most common reasons a development team and testing team would implement a sanity test.

Post-Bug Fixes

• Sanity testing is essential after bug fixes. A sanity test ensures that the fix hasn’t introduced any new issues and that the original problem is truly resolved.

After Regression Testing

• It’s important to perform sanity testing after regression testing to confirm that any core functionalities remain unaffected and intact despite any changes made in the codebase.

Following Minor Changes

• When developers make minor changes or patches to the software, a sanity test validates that those changes (even minor alterations) haven’t adversely affected any main functionalities.

Before Release

• Before a product release or before moving to other more extensive testing phases, sanity testing can confirm the software’s stability.

During Tight Deadlines

• In agile environments or projects with tight deadlines, sanity testing offers a way to quickly validate critical functionalities without extensive test coverage. This is especially important for time-sensitive projects.

When Test Environment Changes

• If there are any changes made in the test environment, such as an update or configuration modification, a sanity test helps to ensure that the environment is stable for more comprehensive testing.

After Integration of Modules

• After software modules or components are added, a sanity test is necessary to quickly confirm their seamless integration into the existing system. This test checks that the other features still function after the addition.

How Sanity Tests Differ from Other Types

There are many types of tests to check the functionality of a system and inspect it for any bugs. A sanity test is just one specific type of test. Here’s how it compares to other common types of testing.

Compared to Smoke Testing

• While a sanity test and a smoke test are both surface-level tests, sanity testing focuses on specific features, while smoke testing assesses the basic functionality of the entire system.

Compared to Regression Testing

• Both sanity tests and regression tests are important after you introduce  changes. However, regression tests check for new bugs after changes, while sanity tests check the functionality of specific features after changes.

Prioritize Critical Functionalities

Several functionalities are crucial to a software’s operation. Here are some key tips for determining what makes a functionality critical and assessing the importance and impact of testing that functionality.

Keep It Unscripted

Sanity testing is always informal. Informal tests take up less time than more comprehensive tests, so there is room for flexibility and creativity in this approach. The unscripted nature of this type of testing is enough to uncover unexpected issues without diving too deep into the whole system.

Fast Feedback is Crucial

Rapid feedback loops are important to keep the development cycle move along. It’s also essential for staying aligned with your timeline and goals. A sanity test provides quick, actionable insights that can significantly accelerate development and rectification processes.

Ensure Scalability

To ensure scalability, adopt modular test design methodologies. It’s also important to select testing tools that offer scalability features. This allows sanity tests to adapt and expand with the project’s growth and evolving requirements.

Document Results Succinctly

Unlike other types of tests, sanity tests don’t necessarily result in extensive documentation. However, the concise documentation of sanity testing results can aid in faster decision-making and subsequent testing phases.

Incorporate Into Continuous Integration (CI)

Sanity testing fits into continuous integration (CI) pipelines by automating post-build sanity checks. This type of testing ensures that critical functionalities remain deployable, enhancing development efficiency and minimizing the risk of deploying faulty code to production.

Leverage Team Insights

There is value in involving the broader team, including developers, designers, and product managers, in sanity testing. Each team member can provide diverse insights that enhance the effectiveness of sanity tests.

Focus on User Experience

Testing from a user’s perspective helps ensure that the core user journey remains intact.

• Review user narratives and requirements to identify critical interactions
• Prioritize high-impact features over less-important ones for sanity testing
• Collaborate with all key stakeholders to define key user interactions because they may have different ideas of what’s important to users
• Conduct usability studies to pinpoint important user interactions
• Analyze user behavior data to identify frequently used features
• Include edge cases in sanity testing

Iterate and Evolve Testing Criteria

Sanity tests are intentionally flexible. They leave room for iterative review and the refinement of testing criteria based on past learnings and product evolution. This level of adaptability is important for maintaining the relevance of sanity tests.

Common Tools for Sanity Tests

The following are some of the most widely used tools in the industry for conducting sanity tests:

• Selenium: Selenium is an open-source automation tool. It is primarily used for testing web applications. It supports multiple programming languages, such as Java, Python, and C#. It also allows for flexible test scripting and facilitates the automation of sanity tests across various browsers and platforms.
• JUnit: JUnit is a popular Java testing framework for writing and executing unit tests. It provides testers with annotations to define test methods and assertions to verify expected outcomes. It simplifies the process of writing and running sanity tests.
• TestNG: TestNG is a testing framework inspired by JUnit and NUnit. Its functionalities for testing include parameterization, grouping, and parallel execution. It supports various annotations and assertions for defining and validating test cases.
• Robot Framework: Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework driven by keywords. It supports various test libraries and platforms and offers a simple, readable syntax for writing test cases. It also has built-in support for web, API, and mobile testing.
• Postman: Postman is a user-friendly API testing tool. It allows testers to create and execute API requests, automate workflows, and perform regression and sanity tests on APIs. Environment variables, collections, and assertions are just a few of the features that streamline testing processes.

Benefits of Sanity Test

There are plenty of pros to sanity tests, which is why they are so common throughout the development lifecycle. Here are a few of the key benefits of sanity tests.

Rapid Feedback

• Sanity tests quickly determine whether new features or fixes have disrupted existing functionalities. This leads to quicker insights. Rapid feedback can help ensure that a project adheres to its intended timeline.

Cost-Efficiency

• The early detection of issues from a sanity test not only saves time—it also saves money. Fixing issues early on can prevent the need for costly fixes later in the development process.

Narrowed Focus

• Sanity testing focuses on specific areas of functionality, ensuring they remain intact after changes. This narrowed focus ensures that each feature works as intended before you move on to more holistic testing.

Flexibility

• Because of the non-scripted nature of sanity testing, testers have the liberty to choose their approach. This means that there is plenty of room for flexibility and creativity in the testing environment.

Boosts Confidence for Releases

• Successful sanity tests increase you team’s confidence in the software’s readiness for further testing or release. They improve clarity and collaboration and ensure that software is stable enough for the team to keep moving forward.

Optimal for Tight Deadlines

• Because they are speedy, sanity tests are suitable in agile or tight-deadline scenarios where quick validations are crucial.

Enhances User Experience

• By ensuring core functionalities work as expected throughout the development cycle, testers can make sure that the user experience will be a positive one.

Reduces Risks

• Sanity testing aids in early risk detection, preventing major issues from advancing to later stages in the development process. In other words, testers can resolve the issues before they get worse or cause more problems, thereby saving time and resources.

Drawbacks of Sanity Testing

Because sanity tests are not comprehensive, there are some drawbacks to them. Keep these sanity test drawbacks and testing best practices in mind.

Limited Coverage

• Sanity testing only focuses on specific functionalities and sections of software. This potentially leaves other areas untested. It is important to understand that the purpose of sanity testing is not to check the entire system but to confirm that the system is ready for more exhaustive testing.

Not Comprehensive

• Since sanity testing is narrow in its approach, it may not catch all potential issues, especially any bugs or errors that are outside of its defined scope. Being mindful of other potential issues and thinking outside the box can help testers ensure functionality.

Requires Expert Knowledge

• Performing effective sanity testing often requires testers to have deep knowledge of the application. Testers need to quickly decide what to test based on any fixes or changes.

Not Suitable for Detailed Reporting

• Sanity testing is typically undocumented. This means that it doesn’t involve detailed reports or logs, which can be a drawback for teams that require comprehensive documentation.

Conclusion

Sanity testing plays a crucial role in software development by providing rapid validation of specific functionalities. This type of testing ensures software stability so that testers can do more comprehensive testing with the confidence that the bugs and errors are cleaned up.

While sanity testing isn’t rigorous, it’s a quick way to assess and verify what needs to happen before exhaustive testing can happen. Overall, sanity testing helps streamline the bigger-picture testing process and ultimately improves the user experience.

FAQ

What is sanity testing?

A subset of regression testing, sanity testing verifies that certain functionalities still work correctly after minor fixes or alterations have been made to the software. It is typically a form of detailed testing, although its extent varies depending on factors like the project requirements and the changes that have occurred.

Regression testing is important for confirming and maintaining the software’s quality as you add new features, fix bugs, or make other changes.

What makes sanity testing different from comprehensive testing?

Sanity testing differs from comprehensive testing in that it is narrow in approach. It focuses on specific functionalities instead of a system at large. The goal of sanity testing is to verify that specific features function as they should after a team makes any changes or modifications to the software. Once all functions are validated and any new bugs or issues are addressed, the team can move on to more comprehensive testing.

Are sanity tests always non-scripted?

Sanity tests are unscripted in nature to accommodate diverse and evolving testing needs. This allows testers to be flexible and get creative in how they test features’ functions. However, project requirements and automation capabilities (or lack thereof) may change how teams test features.

What are different types of software testing?

There are many different types of software testing. Each type is aimed at assessing the reliability, functionality, performance, and/or security of software applications. There are basic and more rigorous testing phases, encompassing different approaches. As part of a comprehensive strategy, the development and testing team may perform unit, system, acceptance, regression, and integration testing. Other types include usability, compatibility, sanity, and smoke tests.