Top ten tips for performance testing
Leading UK-based testing provider encourages best practice in performance and load testing
Facilita, the leading UK-based supplier of IT performance and load-testing solutions, has identified what it believes are the ten key requirements organisations should consider when they are looking for an enterprise IT performance and load testing provider. Facilita’s Top Ten testing requirements are designed to provide organisations with a best practice benchmark, helping them to optimise performance testing, while derisking the process for the growing number of businesses with complex enterprise-class testing requirements
Formed in 1989, Facilita has delivered enterprise performance testing solutions for many of the UK’s largest organisations – from major central government departments and some of the country’s leading banks to most of the UK’s specialist testing consultancies. According to Facilita co-founder, Peter Greenwood: “many respected IT project management methodologies agree, the testing phase of a project should account for at least a third of overall project resources – yet in our experience the reality is that testing accounts for less than 10 per cent of the time.
“Given that this is the reality of enterprise testing today, we think it makes sense for organisations to at least optimise the time they spend on testing. To enable that we’ve come up with ten clear steps that organisations should take to help reduce their risk of IT project failure,” he continued.
Ten steps to performance and load testing success:
1. Don’t forget to do it! – Facilita considers there are usually three reasons why organisations don’t test their applications – 1.they’ve either forgotten about it, 2.they find enterprise-class performance and load testing simply too expensive, or 3.they can’t find a way of testing their own application with off-the-shelf tools.
2. Look for a quality testing provider – there simply aren’t any shortcuts, it’s either do it right or get it wrong. If you don’t test properly then your systems won’t work properly, mission-critical applications could fail, SLA targets might get missed, and organisations might fail to match their compliance requirements – lack of testing quickly becomes a risk management issue.
3. It’s not a simple exercise – for some applications you might need to simulate thousands of concurrent users, all of them entering different data, different logins and User IDs. This might require testing scripts that run over 20,000 plus lines of code and take weeks to prepare. Ensure your testing provider has expertise in creating application-specific recorder/generator code components that can be quickly configured so that active testing can get underway quicker.
4. Look for enhanced local support – although there are a number of different enterprise-class performance and load testing solutions vendors, the majority of them are headquartered in the US or overseas and aren’t able to provide your project with enhanced local support when it’s actually needed – make sure your testing provider can!
5. Flexible approach to engagements – evolving testing requirements can mean that even the most simple testing software license agreements don’t always prove flexible enough. Some UK organisations have become increasingly frustrated with the more restrictive licensing regimes of US test software vendors – consider working with a testing provider that adopts a more flexible pricing and licensing regime.
6. In testing, less isn’t more – most organisations have some form of legacy software in place, and in our non-standard world out-of-the-box solutions very rarely apply. Look to work with a vendor that can support the broadest range of technologies and products – from earlier mainframes running green-screen applications right through to the internet, java and .NET technologies.
7. Ability to solve new and non-standard testing issues – off-the-shelf testing solutions are just that – off-the-shelf – so don’t expect them to address emerging standards or more complex architectural requirements. Examples of Facilita’s breadth of testing capability include recent projects to develop non-standard protocols to test server responses for hub/spoke architecture, and delivering DHCP protocol support within a tight timescale.
8. Testing is about people as well as tools – accessibility and responsiveness are essential parts of an overall IT performance and load testing approach. Facilita, for example, backs its performance testing tools with a comprehensive UK-based solutions and professional services capability that can develop and implement tailored testing solutions for applications that aren’t supported by standard testing software.
9. Build testing into your risk management procedures – risk management is all about planning for any eventuality – IT performance and load testing has a key role to play here in ensuring the integrity and reliability of today’s mission-critical applications.
10. Make sure you can share your testing results – performance and load testing is a serious discipline, but it also needs to be understood by other key business disciplines such as business operations, finance and senior management. It helps to have some form of graphical reporting capability that allows you to share your testing successes with other parts of your organisation.
Unlike other performance tool vendors, Facilita is headquartered in the UK and - through its Performing Testing Centre of Excellence in Congleton, Cheshire – the company backs its performance testing tools with a comprehensive solutions and professional services and technical support capability.
“Thanks to our local team of UK-based consultants and technical professionals we can support our performance and load testing solution with an accessible, tailored technical support capability that helps ensure that any technology difficulties we encounter don’t get in the way of providing an effective testing solution,” added Peter Greenwood.
