3 key things to know about performance testing

How much does 1 second delay cost? I know the response could vary depending on the context. If it is a space walk or an emergency operation, it is life and death. However, in the context of a typical business, one second page loading delay could cost nearly $2.5 Million lost sales a year.

It is very critical to understand that people abandon websites and move on if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Inspite of having all these data, IT departments are still struggling to get some grips on application performance testing (PT).

In this article, I would share the 3 critical factors for building a successful PT strategy. In a typical waterfall project, the performance testing was done at the end of code freeze. However, Agile methods recommend performance testing during every sprint.  My experience has been that every conceivable problem in a software project starts at the beginning, mostly because of ignorance. This includes PT, as well.

Photo courtesy flickr

For a successful execution of PT, enough time and energy needs to be spent during Sprint 0. This energy should build a strong foundation of skills, automation and strategy as shown in the picture below.

Let us look at contribution of the above 3 areas during PT.

1. Availability of good automation tools decides the fate of the PT.  Even though there are several commercial tools available in the market, open source ones are still closer to heart for Java/.Net programmers. It is a shame that not many free tools are available for legacy systems. Even though automation is highly recommended by everyone, one should take a cognizant, evidence driven, scientific approach and calculate the ROI.

continue reading the article here on