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

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

Creating Successful Requirements for Performance and Scalability from Subjective Goals

Whenever I work on a performance problem, I need a maturity assessment of the existing requirements. A great place to start is characterizing the performance issues from the stakeholders. Let’s separate this into three archetypes to guide the discussion: Subjective, Low Precision, and Monitored. For each of these, I will try to describe some patterns… Continue reading Creating Successful Requirements for Performance and Scalability from Subjective Goals

User Modeling and Script Modularization

User Modeling User modeling is a very important step when planning out load tests. There are many ways to go about creating a model, but the UCML (User Community Modeling Language) Diagram stands out as an excellent way to quickly and visually communicate the various business processes virtual users will perform during the load test.… Continue reading User Modeling and Script Modularization