The Nightly Build and Smoke Test is a process in which
a software product is completely built every night and
then put through a series of tests to verify its basic
operations. This process is a coding-stage process,
and it gets initiated at the start of the coding phase
of the project. The process produces its savings by
reducing the likelihood of several common, time-consuming
risks – unsuccessful integration, low quality,
and poor progress visibility.
The Nightly Build
and Smoke Test can be used effectively on projects of
virtually any size and complexity.
It is the responsibility
of the Build Group to create the required environment
for running the nightly builds and monitoring it on
a daily basis.
Advantages:
Here are some of
the advantages associated with the Nightly Build and
Smoke Test:
1. Reduced
Integration Risks: One of the greatest risks
that a project faces is when team members combine or
“integrate” their codes that they have been
working on separately; their code does not work well
together. The nightly-build-and-smoke-test process keeps
integration errors small and manageable.
2. Easier
Defect Diagnosis: When the application is built
and tested every day, it’s much easier to pinpoint
why the application breaks down on any given day. If
it worked on Day 17, and breaks on Day 18, something
that happened between the Day 17 build and the Day 18
build broke the application.
3. Progress
Monitoring: When we build the application every
day, the features that are present and not present are
obvious. Both technical and non-technical managers can
simply use the application to get a sense of how close
it is to completion.
The Nightly–Build–and–Smoke–Test
process is at heart a risk-management practice. It has
a powerful ability to make the schedules more predictable
and to eliminate some of the risks that can cause extreme
delays – integration problems, low quality, and
lack of progress visibility.
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