A Brief Overview Of Performance Testing: Steps, Types, & Important Tips

Meaning Of Performance Testing

Software testing performance measures the performance of an application in a non-functional manner. It measures an application's stability, speed, scalability, and responsiveness under specific workloads.

An important aspect of testing performance is evaluating the response times of browsers, pages, and networks, the processing times of server requests, the number of concurrent users that are acceptable, the amount of CPU memory consumed, and the type and number of errors that occur during the use of the application.

Importance Of Performance Testing

An organization's performance testing efforts are essential when developing high-quality digital services that provide a smooth and reliable user experience, whether retail websites or SaaS solutions.

The benefit of testing performance is that it helps identify issues that may impede an application's functionality. As a result of performance issues, users often experience slow responses, long load times, unresponsive functionality, system crashes, and other issues directly related to application speed, stability, and scalability.

An organization can only maximize user experience and business goals by fixing these performance issues.

What Is The Best Time To Execute Performance Tests?

Software development life cycles (SDLCs) should begin with performance testing as early as possible and often run during this process. Likewise, the cost of correcting performance problems increases as the SDLC progresses.

User experience can be negatively affected by performance issues identified in the production environment, resulting in lower user growth rates, higher customer acquisition costs, and lower retention rates.

Organizations will spend numerous person-hours to find and fix performance issues if they fail to uncover them before the application is released.

Performance tests should be run before the first line of code is written to assess the base technology (network, load balancer, web or application server, database, application) for the workload levels that the application will support. Consequently, performance issues can be caught early, and expensive fixes avoided in the later phases of development.

The development phase should also include performance tests for web services, micro services, APIs, and other critical components. As the application takes shape, performance tests should become part of the normal testing process.

Types Of Performance Testing

Several types of performance tests are available, each measuring or assessing a different characteristic of an application.

· Load Testing

The loading testing aims to determine how well an application performs under expected workloads. In loading testing, bottlenecks are uncovered before the application is released.

· Stress Testing

Stress testing measures an application's performance under extreme workloads to see how it responds to high traffic levels or data processing. Stress testing is meant to identify a breaking point in an application.

· Spike Testing

Testing spikes measure the behavior of an application when its workload increases quickly and repeatedly.

· Endurance Testing

The endurance test evaluates the applications' performance over a long time, similar to load testing. In addition, testing endurance is used to identify problems such as memory leaks, which can slow down the application's response.

· Scalability Testing

The scalability test measures an application's ability to scale to a greater workload. Tests closely monitor the applications' performance as the workload increases.

· Volume Testing

Volume and flood tests measure how well a program performs under heavy data loads. Testing volume is used to identify any performance issues caused by fluctuations in data.

How To Conduct Performance Testing

It is important to consider the application's nature and the goals and metrics that organizations consider most important when implementing testing performance. However, most performance tests follow certain guidelines or steps.

· Analyze The Test Environment And Tools

Identify your team's physical test environment, production environment, and testing tools. The specifications of hardware, software, infrastructure, and network configurations in test and production environments should also be recorded. Some tests may take place in production, but stringent protections must be established to prevent disruptions to production.

· Measuring Performance

A performance test's success criteria should be determined by identifying goals and constraints, such as response time, throughput, and resource allocation. Testers should be allowed to establish a larger collection of tests and performance benchmarks based on the project specifications, while key criteria will be derived from those specifications. No performance benchmarking is available in the project specifications, so this is essential.

· Design And Plan Performance Tests

Develop scenarios to test all possible use cases of the application and determine how users will vary among end-users. Also, identify all metrics that need to be measured during the testing process.

· Set Up The Test Environment

Ensure the testing environment, tools, and resources needed for the test are ready before the test is executed.

· Design And Implement Tests
Create the performance tests based on your test design.

· Tests Should Be Executed

Tests should be executed, and results monitored.

· Retest, Analyze, And Report

The results should be analyzed and shared. Then, depending on your needs, you may rerun the test with the same or different parameters.

Best Practices For Performance Testing

It is the quality of the test itself that determines whether the quality and accurate results will be produced in software testing. The same applies to testing performance. Thus, creating a test environment that is identical to the production environment is vital so you can accurately measure the application's performance.

The SDLC should incorporate testing performance early and often. The cost of correcting performance issues can increase if performance tests are delayed until the end of the project. Moreover, testing individual components or modules, not just the entire application, is highly recommended.

Testing an application multiple times ensures that the results are accurate. If the results are consistent, you can determine if the application's performance is acceptable with more confidence.

There are many performance-testing tools on the market, but choosing the right one is crucial. You should consider the application's specific project needs, organizational requirements, and technical specifications to accomplish this. To ensure your team can use a tool, assess their skills and experiences before choosing one.

As part of our SDLC services, QA Genesis helps our clients manage performance tests and implement tools that optimize the overall quality assurance process. Learn more about performance testing, or see how we are helping organizations overcome testing challenges.