Performance Testing Overview

Introduction

Performance testing is a non-functional type of testing to determine the system responsiveness i.e. speed, stability, reliability and scalability.

OR

Performance testing, a non-functional testing technique performed to determine the system parameters in terms of responsiveness and stability under various workload. Performance testing measures the quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.

OR

Performance testing is done to provide stakeholders with information about their application regarding speed, stability and scalability.

Goals

There are various factors which are examined but following are some of the main goals of conducting the performance tests on an application.

Access the Production Readiness
Check the system response time during expected load conditions
System behaviour during unexpected load conditions
Check the system scalability
Best configuration settings for optimal performance
System behaviour during spike user loads
System stability
Compare two platforms with the same software to see which performs better
Compare Performance characteristics of system configurations
Evaluate System against performance criteria
Find throughput level
Discover what parts of the application perform poorly and under what conditions
Finding the source of performance problems
Support system tuning

Importance of Performance Testing

Average user clicks away after 8 seconds of delay

$45 billion business revenue loss due to poor web applications performance

In November 2009, a computerized system used by US based airlines to maintain flight plans failed for several hours causing havoc amongst all major airports. This caused huge delays to flight schedules causing inconvenience for thousands of frustrated passengers. Identified as a ‘serious efficiency problem’ by the Federal Aviation Authority, this was one of the biggest system failures in US Aviation History!

Aberdeen found that inadequate performance could impact revenue by up to 9%
Business performance begins to suffer at 5.1 seconds of delay in response times of web applications and 3.9 for critical applications and an additional second of waiting on a website significantly impact customer satisfaction and visitor conversions. Page views, conversions rate and customer satisfaction drops 11%, 7% and 16% respectively!