I’ve been thinking about how teams handle smoke testing as part of their QA process — especially when it comes to catching basic functionality issues early in the release cycle.

Some challenges I’ve come across:

Tests that don’t fail fast enough

Missing critical checks before deeper testing

Confusion between smoke and sanity tests

Automation that’s hard to maintain

I recently read a helpful guide on smoke testing that breaks down practical strategies and best practices for implementing it effectively in real development workflows.