Comments on: Worst Practices in Performance Testing

By: Stan Desyatnikov

Stan Desyatnikov — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:28:14 +0000

Another example for “Stick to the requirements, even when they don’t make sense”

When there is only one response time threshold for all applications/transactions, e.g. 3 or 5 seconds.

Sometimes it is useless for the transactions that handle big volumes of data. (e.g. search, export, upload, download transactions).

I think, for such cases there should be defined appropriate response time thresholds.

By: Ward

Ward — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:39:53 +0000

SMEs are also the folks that commonly know how the business will perform various different transactions. So they identify the transaction steps to the Performance Tester. Otherwise in large systems testers may invoke a business process that is not used by the business.

By: Nick Wilton

Nick Wilton — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:32:10 +0000

Often a symptom of the first three items above; is that performance testing is often left to the very last week or two before the go-live date.
It is a very good idea to performance test an application as early as possible, particularly if the application has been highly-customized. Some integration tools even allow you do run a performance test during code build cycles.
Defects raised during performance testing tend to be architectural in nature which can result in fundamental code changes, and therefore much code or configuration rework. Effective projects tend to include a full performance review cycle within their solution design phase which can very beneficial in mitigating the risk of significant performance defects being raised.

By: Anon

Anon — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:01:01 +0000

Test managers always want to re-write my reports. The last one wanted me to remove every occurance of the word “defect” from the report, and replace it with “issue”. :-)

Also, this Tech Tip reminded me of a quote from Douglas Adams…
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.