The Right Strategy to Shift from Performance Testing to Performance Engineering
The later you find a bug, the more you will have to spend to fix it. The delayed identification of bugs requires more work hours to fix and longer downtime, eventually impacting the bottom line of the business. While this is true for all quality attributes, if your application is facing performance issues, an error can reduce your revenue by hundreds of dollars per minute.
Hence, the transition from performance testing to performance engineering is very important. It can reduce post-release performance issues significantly and save a lot of time and resources. Performance engineering enables the team to identify and fix bugs at the very beginning. It is especially a boon for businesses that have suffered from the late identification of issues.
What is the Difference?
Performance testing is conducted to identify the behavior of the application under the desired load. The primary focus of performance testing service is on user experience and how its performance could get affected.
QA engineers focus on writing specific scripts and their successful execution. However, the focus may still remain on specific modules, rather than on a product as a whole. This can be fixed by switching to performance engineering.
Performance engineering is different from the traditional load testing method. In a normal process, it gets late already by the time the app reaches the QA stage. Waiting till the last moment to identify and fix a critical issue delays the time-to-market and escalates the cost of the project.
When you switch to performance engineering, the development team ensures end-to-end analysis of the system and how different components interact with one another. Having an all-round perspective enables developers to identify multiple problems at a very nascent stage of development. It is easier to find and fix the root cause while eliminating multiple issues.
Essential Steps to Transition from Performance Testing to Performance Engineering
Transitioning from the standard software testing method to a more robust quality engineering approach involves several crucial steps in the journey to shift left.
1. Incorporate Performance Engineering into the Initial Development Process
The switch to performance engineering can only happen with a professional mindset. Developers need to think thoroughly about the performance of the application before starting the development. The sooner, the better.
Organizations need to adapt to a defined culture of performance engineering. Leaders need to create and nurture a comprehensive professional work environment and set up a work culture that emphasizes on key values, beliefs, and practices.
2. Define the Project Scope and KPIs
Define non-functional performance requirements to ensure all aspects of the development process and app’s functionality are covered. You are also required to define specific KPIs and project-related metrics that enable the team to analyze performance efficiently.
Think about factors like the purpose of application and how it will accomplish the goal. If the unified criteria are absent, the time might run into chaos. With already set expectations and KPIs from the start, the process of performance engineering runs smoother and in a focussed manner.
3. Check the Resources
Make sure that there are enough engineers allocated to execute the tasks comfortably. Along with that, ensure the availability of all the requisite tools and robust resource planning.
4. Find the Courage to Change
The process of software development is continuously evolving at a rapid pace. Hence, it is crucial to stay agile and ready to adapt to new developments and circumstances for efficient process optimization. Software changes are a must. One way to be more efficient and effective with the changes is through Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD). To learn more about CICD, visit harness.io.
Also, continuous evolution is essential to stay cost-efficient and successful. Changes might sometimes include taking a few steps back to move forward efficiently.
Key Trends within Performance Engineering
With apps becoming more complex, developers need to understand the criticality of developing a quality product from start to end. Performance engineering enables the development team to stay efficient and agile while identifying potential bugs at the very start of the process.
It also includes ensuring performance from the very start. Just like any other software development method, performance engineering is also evolving. It is getting simpler, more accurate, and thoroughly integrated.
Network Virtualization
Several vendors offer this tool that allows developers to easily mimic various latencies, bandwidths, and pack-loss values. It is essential to optimize the performance of apps on servers with greater latency. You can also adjust or remove variables from network profiles. It would enable developers to easily fine-tune mobile application testing services for higher latencies.
Machine Learning (ML) with Performance Engineering
Machine learning algorithms can help in faster identification of cause and effect patterns in the applications. Processes can be fed into the deep learning algorithms for detailed analysis. The algorithm keeps on learning over time and starts identifying correlations between essential aspects of the current project and elements that have contributed to the failure of the past.
Due to the ability of ML to evolve at a faster pace, you can incorporate it at every step of software development. As the processes evolve, it will be leveraged by various industries and niches.
In Summary
Digital users are now more aware and have a lower tolerance for bugs and failures. Businesses are also competing to deliver more engaging and flawless customer experience through tailored services and more complex software that are difficult to test. Amid evolving software development, it has become business-critical to shift from performance testing to engineering to achieve quality-at-speed.
QA InfoTech is a leading offshore vendor that specializes in performance engineering and other QA solutions. Talk to our experts to know how we can help you achieve quality efficiently.
Written by Erna Clayton
Edited by Michael Ding Alexander Fleiss
