What is the full potential of an application? The catalogue of features, optimised use of latest tech, platforms & methodology, flexibility to upgrade, and connecting the latitudes of engineering.
Today's app store has a robust business model to challenge creative app development globally and publish 5-star applications. However, the actual judgement of an app’s potential is what happens between a live application and the variable end-user interactions: the ability of the application infrastructure to harmonise the available resources and technology in a given environment to produce maximum performance.
This redirects the full stack functional development to quality engineering for benchmarking performance and improving the reliability of an application in dynamic environments.
It is common knowledge in the modern SDLC to adopt incremental shift left testing to facilitate quality releases. In this context, Performance Testing is a concerted effort to augment the functional testing efforts and demonstrate high calibre applications. Focusing on responsiveness and resource utilisation at large, application performance could be the best differentiator amongst competing applications.
Some of the proven ways to realise the stunning impact of performance testing, keeping the modern transformation and development trends in mind, are compiled below.
Load Model: The core of performance testing is to establish a Load Model that accounts for the simulation of user journeys and assigns logical weightage to each of the modules/feature paths (think product search on an eCommerce website or visitors on a new OTT release). This captures the essence of creating test scenarios and preparing test data for contextual load configurations.
Use of Metrics to establish challenging targets for performance: Performance testing tools (open source/commercial) generate a list of metrics such as processing speed, network consumption, data transfer velocity, and workload efficiency. The crucial role of a Performance Test Expert is to benchmark the perception of positive and negative trends, measure the influence of all the variables on performance, and prescribe the right action.
Scheduled Performance Tests: Allow for repeated and parallel performance tests to detect regressive bottlenecks in
test variations across browsers/devices,
emphasised tests, for example, concurrent logs showing spiked page requests or high bounce rates,
scheduled soak tests for testing load endurance (several hours),
performance test design for migration solutions, and
event-based performance goals for a holiday/targeted campaigns.
Lean Test Cases: Prioritise iterative tests/regression for critical modules or devices to improve the testing velocity by 1.5-2x. The knack for prioritisation resolves the investment decisions objectively in preparing for better software/database/hardware.
Adaptive Testing: In contemporary auto-scaling environments, performance tests should move out of the rigid approach and follow adaptive concurrency tests.
Plan for progressive load tests (incremental load based on breaking points) in, say, 20-30-50-100% increments and create a scaling profile at each instance.
measure the performance of the current build and examine the historical performance reports for patterns and anomalies
Finally, the proper testing partner can bring in the right industry experience to narrow the choice of best practices, recommend the right tools, and improve the dimensions of app performance understanding through metrics. According to the World Quality Report 2021-22, AI and testing prove maturity in adoption. The highest-rated agenda was performance test automation (23%), followed by functional test automation (17%) and mobile test automation (14%), an indication that the latter solutions are mature and growing confidence in use. The scope for Performance Testing is evolving, and the specialised roles are proof: Performance Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer/ Platform Reliability Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and so on.
CalibreCode is an independent testing solutions provider that hosts advanced test and research labs to continuously brainstorm test scenarios for the evolving user interactions with applications. Our test experts take a consultative approach to analyse the domain and experience goals (functional & non-functional) to propose testing types. What we do better:
simplify the understanding of performance testing types Latency Testing, Stress Testing, Load Testing, Infrastructure performance testing, Failover Testing, Capacity Testing
minimise the overhead in script creation by proposing the suitable load model
assist in making the closest assertions about the app’s performance trends using a combination of logs, insight into real-time usage metrics & domain understanding of user preferences
Reach out to CalibreCode to know more about our Testing Services or build your Test Strategy with us at qa@calibrecode.com