Best Practices for Application Performance Testing
Performance testing measures the processing speed, bandwidth, reliability, and scalability of application under some load. There are several best practices that can help you improve its overall effectiveness. Here are five best practices for conducting effective performance testing.
Test Early and Frequently
Performance testing is sometimes a throwaway, which is carried out in a rush at a later stage in the development cycle. You should be proactive. Take an agile approach that uses iterative testing throughout the entire development life cycle. Moreover, permit performance unit testing to be part of the development process and later repeat the same tests on a larger scale in later stages of application readiness.
Follow DevOps Approach
IT businesses realized the need to combine development and IT operations activities. As a result, the DevOps methodology emerged. DevOps should specifically involve developers, testers, and IT operations functioning together to carry out performance tests against the final product as a team.
Keep the Users in Mind
The performance of servers and networks executing software is usually the only target of performance testing. Humans use software, therefore performance testing should take human into consideration. The user experience should be considered throughout tests and user interface-time should be recorded alongside server data.
Perform System Performance Tests
Modern applications include many individual, complex systems, including databases, application servers, web services, legacy systems and so on. All of these systems must be separately and collectively performance evaluated. This assists in exposing weakness, highlight interdependencies and determining which systems to segregate for additional performance optimization.
Consistently Reporting & Result Analysis
Design and execution of performance tests are critical, reporting is also an important part of performance tests. Consider your audience and tailor reports to each audience. Reports for developers should differ from reports sent to project owners, managers, corporate executives and even customers.