The Shift-left Approach: From Performance Testing To Performance Engineering

When it comes to present-day software technology, the only thing that determines the success of your application or software solution is the performance it can deliver. Right from the load that the software could take to the effect it has on the device, it is necessary that the given product manages to satisfy the user's needs.   

Though the initial days of the software development had limited scope and feature requirements, the advanced software solutions need effective performance testing services to overcome any downtime or lag that might affect the user experience and brand reputation. Especially when any latency with the identification of bugs costs you money, it is always a good idea to overrule additional work hours and generate greater revenue with timely testing.  Especially when it comes to performance issues, one single error could bring a loss of $1.5 million per year to a company, it becomes necessary to make a transition from performance testing to performance engineering to have saved on money and time resources while preventing any issues.  Most importantly, performance engineering, when fostered, allows you to resist issues right from the beginning of the development process, making all the difference to what reaches the end-users and the market. Being one of the top software testing companies, our team at BugRaptors brings you the roadmap to switch from performance testing to performance engineering.   But before that, it is vital for us to understand the basic difference between performance testing and performance engineering in order to develop an improved understanding of the process. Let's begin.   

Performance Testing & Performance Engineering: The Difference  

Coming to the basic definition, performance testing is done to understand the behavior of an application under load while focusing on the user experience and delivering an overall satisfying application. It usually needs testers to work on dedicated test scripts that must run well for every specific part of the system, unlike performance engineering, where testers have the advantage of tracking the entire system as a whole.  Different from the traditional load testing practices, Performance Engineering is a more comprehensive approach. Since any product at its development stage requires extensive use of time, effort, and expenses to reach the desired functionalities, adding performance testing services into the later stage of development brings issues that cause greater delays with the releases.   However, switching to performance engineering allows the team to run through the entire system and check on all the interactions, allowing both developers and testers to curb a large number of issues at the same time. Also, performance engineering helps easy tracking of issues while eliminating any issues that might affect the features, functionality, and end-user experience.   

Struggling To Understand Different Types Of Performance Testing Services?  Read the blog: Types of Performance Testing   

Moving From Performance Testing To Performance Engineering: The Roadmap  

When you need to transit from some standard testing practices to a comprehensive test plan that aids your Quality Assurance model, it becomes necessary to stick with a process that can help with a smooth transition. Here's a short guide that would help your company to improve your Quality Assurance Services by quickly adapting to performance engineering:   

Accommodate Performance Engineering At Early Development Stage  

Moving from performance testing to performance engineering demands complete transformation in the mindset. This needs developers and testers to consider the performance goals at the earliest stages of development, making it easier to accommodate performance engineering and yield better results.   Since it might feel difficult for teams to adopt, it needs the managers and executives to foster a culture that supports performance engineering. Moreover, the technical teams can even define the tone and environment that helps exercise values and beliefs that support performance engineering.  

Underline The Scope Of Project & Key Performance Indicators  

Once your team has the perfect mindset to enroll performance engineering process and metrics, you can make a collaborative effort to identify all the functional and non-functional aspects that might affect the performance during the development process. Also, the process demands underlining any KPIs and metrics that can help assess the software or application to meet the desired UX and business goals.   

Some of the few queries that you might need to target include:  

• What is the objective of the application?  

• What should be the ideal process to achieve the defined objectives?  

The answers to these questions can aid both testers and developers in avoiding any chaos and have a criterion that can help chase defined KPIs through performance engineering.  

Measure Your Resources  

The next big step that can help you yield the most user-efficient products through performance engineering is measuring your resources. Though it may appear easy, it is vital to make the right choice with the test automation frameworks, tools, and teams to ensure all the defined goals are achieved on time. In short, resource planning must be an important subject of focus for the testers and developers when needed to develop the most cost-friendly solutions that can be quickly launched into the market and meet the needs of users.   

Making Way For The Change  

The software industry is changing at a very quick pace, and those who need to sustain in this highly competitive environment have to aim for Quality Assurance services and adapt to the changing scenarios that can aid developments for the future. It is more of a process optimization technique that needs businesses to make way for change in their existing techniques.   

After all, if it is something that is paramount for business success and improved business operations, it is only the efficiency to adopt change. At times, these changes may even demand the developers and testers to take a step back, but it can ultimately help to yield results that can cultivate a perfect user experience and even better sales.   

Key Performance Engineering Trends To Consider  

With time, the software and applications have become more feature-oriented and complex. It creates a little pressure on developers and QA testers to create products that can perform well throughout. Performance engineering helps testers to develop agility, yield efficiency, and locate any issues with the process.   Performance engineering even demands testers to think of performance objectives from the earliest stage of the project shifting the focus on all things that can improve the experience. Similar to other aspects of software development, performance engineering simplifies the test process while adding to the accuracy and better system integrations. Here are the two of the most significant key performance engineering trends that testers need to consider on their way to developing quality assurance solutions:  

Network Virtualization  

Network Virtualization is a practice that allows testers to mimic different bandwidths and latencies along with pack-loss values. The technique not only helps to optimize the performance of the application on high-latency servers but helps remove variables from network profiles allowing developers to fine-tune the software and application for varying latency rates.  

Machine Learning  

Since AI and ML technologies have made their way to business operations, Machine learning has drastically changed professional operations like performance testing. The algorithms not only help to reveal cause and effect patterns but aids thorough analysis of the application to define correlations between various aspects that had triggered a failure in the past and have chances to affect the existing project.  

Moreover, machine learning supports the evolution of software development, making technology more readily available to satisfy the software needs of different domains and industries.  

Concluding It All...  

When we talk about business software, each industry has its own requirements. Moreover, the existing business operations do not have enough bandwidth to delay the launch or bear any failure. With this changing nature of software development, it becomes necessary for testers to switch from traditional performance testing services to advanced performance engineering models.   Though it is likely for testers and developers to face challenges with the new work model that need them to test from the very beginning of the development process, the change of culture can help make a quick switch for all. After all, performance engineering is more of a continuous process that needs to run parallel with all stages of development, driving more efficiency and productivity to the system.  

All the best!  

For more information on performance testing or performance engineering solutions, feel free to reach our team of ISTQB certified experts at BugRaptors.   Contact Today!