Performance Engineering Tips - A solid plan leads to better results

Creating a performance plan has many challenges, creating a realistic load test has to be one the greatest. Load and performance testing is many times seen as a nice to have. However, no one ever says "yeah, I'm OK if my applications ran slower". As load and data capacity increases, this is exactly what happens. Mid-stream in the operation of business the applications can suddenly start to slow down. This happens usually without warning and almost always has a detrimental impact to the business.

How can you keep this from happening? A better test plan is the place to start.

1. Review the types of activities that the users will be performing. We call these transactions.
2. Review the location and amount of users. Take into consideration network speeds.
3. Review the amount transactions that will be performed.

Many IT performance testers simply look at user count and business transactions. Failing to understand the network conditions the volume of transactions will produce an inadequate simulation.

The better the simulation - the more valuable the predicted operation of the system when it goes live.