It’s Late 2016, What’s the New Rule for Performance Test Environments?

This question was passed around internally last week: “Does anyone on this distribution list have a list of good reasons why a test environment should approximate that of production to provide accurate test results in lieu of using a cheaper, smaller test environment and math to estimate production-like results?” In my former career, we had… Continue reading It’s Late 2016, What’s the New Rule for Performance Test Environments?

Performance Assessment – Collaboration

Learn to Collaborate Communication breakdown is not unique to IT. Somehow, most IT organizations create towers. Maybe this happens to reduce the number of status meeting or to allow for a tree-shaped management chain. When leadership creates these separate teams, the intention is not to prevent the individual contributors from collaborating and working efficiently, but… Continue reading Performance Assessment – Collaboration

Documenting Complex Enterprise Apps

Many of the enterprise systems we encounter are very complex. Unfortunately, the IT teams that develop and support these solutions will oftentimes have inaccurate documentation to show all of the elements. The design of the software is handled by one organization whereas the actual implementation onto the underlying components end up within other teams such… Continue reading Documenting Complex Enterprise Apps

Are You Using Best Practices for Your Performance Testing?

“Best practices” is a term that’s become a bit overused in the technology industry, with some expert (and not-so-expert) professionals using it as a mechanism to promote their preferred approaches. Nevertheless, the term still has considerable validity in the world of software testing. Here, a substantial body of evidence effectively proves that implementing key, documented… Continue reading Are You Using Best Practices for Your Performance Testing?

Extracting Histogram Data from HP LoadRunner 12.01

A histogram is a statistical graph used to show the number of times data, inside a collection, falls within a particular range. In performance testing, you can use a frequency distribution histogram to illustrate the frequency and dispersion of transaction times. In this example we will report on a transaction, which is a cause for… Continue reading Extracting Histogram Data from HP LoadRunner 12.01

Winning the Performance Race

From experience running benchmarks, I can tell you that in order to win them, you must have the full run of the servers, settings and the code. However, this is not the typical case in any large enterprise solution operating in the ‘real’ world. How can you achieve inclusive buy in on performance from your… Continue reading Winning the Performance Race

Understanding Performance of PayPal as a Service (PPAAS)

By Steve Sturtevant, Sales Engineer at AppDynamics In a previous post – Agile Performance Testing – Proactively Managing Performance – I discussed some of the challenges faced in managing a successful performance engineering practices in an Agile development model.  Let’s continue this with a real world example, highlighting how AppDynamics simplifies the collection and comparison… Continue reading Understanding Performance of PayPal as a Service (PPAAS)

Agile Performance Testing – Proactively Managing Performance

Just in case you haven’t heard, Waterfall is out and Agile is in.  For organizations that thrive on innovation, successful agile development and continuous deployment processes are paramount to reducing go to market time, fast tracking product enhancements and quickly resolving defects. Executed successfully, with the right team in place, Agile practices should result in… Continue reading Agile Performance Testing – Proactively Managing Performance

CloudTest – Anything is po-ssh-ible with Java

The need for a POC I came across a situation where I needed to time an SSH call to a UNIX server and wanted to see if CloudTest was a viable option to perform this testing. SOASTA CloudTest gives you the capability to run Java code within a Clip. There is a short tutorial on… Continue reading CloudTest – Anything is po-ssh-ible with Java

Choosing a Testing/Requirements Tool – from a tester/user perspective

Practice what you preach. As a tester it is easy to review someone else’s requirements and find issues but what if you’re forced to create your own requirements? I was asked to put in requirements for a test data management tool and then a lot of things started to go through my mind. What functions… Continue reading Choosing a Testing/Requirements Tool – from a tester/user perspective