Why You Need to Start Performance Testing Today

More than ever, organizations today depend on their software applications to drive execution on both an internal and external level. Whether to improve business processes or meet customer requirements, this new digital age means poor performance and lag time in responsiveness is no longer tolerated.

It’s vital software applications have the ability to manage any particular workload at any given time. Not just some of the time, but all of the time. Statistics show that mediocre performance results in a negative impact on organization’s overall business goals.

To drive this home, an Aberdeen Benchmark report found that issues with application performance could impact overall corporate revenues by up to nine percent. Following this revelation further, the research firm found that “organizations are increasingly realizing the importance of optimizing performance of Web applications that are being used by their customers, prospects, partners and employees.”

The ability to maintain a stable and responsive application, while providing quality performance during situations like peak load times, is vital to business success. To deal with any potential issues, it is a must testing teams integrates performance testing into their testing strategy.

Performance testing enables testers to execute a variety of tests that help analyze different aspects of your software application. It is a way to ensure quality when it comes to determining how your system or application performs under a certain capacity. Performance testing tests and verifies a product meets specifications such as reliability, stability, responsiveness and scalability, especially when under distress.

When should you begin performance testing?

The answer is quite simple: start performance testing now! There’s no reason you should hesitate on this type of testing. Besides, when performance directly affects your bottom line, why wouldn’t you start performance testing immediately? In fact, you should probably start preparing and performing performance tests before any code is actually laid out.

Test all aspects of your technology – network, servers, database, etc. – to ensure that your product is ready for its intended audience the moment it’s rolled out. By designing your tests to simulate scenarios such as security risks, increased loads on the system, transactions during these peak loads and response times, you are able to quickly identify performance bottlenecks before they have the possibility of affecting your organization negatively. Teams that hesitate on starting performance testing or wait till right before launch will find that they have set themselves up for potential failure down the line.

Types of performance testing that are done

Several types of tests are often used to verify that performance goals are meeting their expected results. Some, such as stress tests, monitor stress and how well the product is handling, for instance, a substantial increase in users. Others, such as endurance tests, conduct tests over a longer period of time to ensure the software or software application can maintain the expected load. Other types of performance tests include:

• Load Tests
• Volume Tests
• Scalability Tests
• Smoke Tests
• Unit Tests

Conclusion

Performance metrics can serve a variety of purposes when it comes to functional testing. It can measure different aspects of the product to ensure it can handle an expected workload, it can verify that the product meets specifications previously laid out and it can also identify performance bottlenecks before launch. Just remember to implement performance testing early in the game so that you can better serve your customers and organization’s bottom line.