Users abandon slow apps; infrastructure bills soar without capacity planning. Performance testing ensures your system is fast, resilient, and cost-efficient under real demand.
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Test Types & When to Use Them
- Load: Typical peak traffic; validates SLAs and saturation points.
- Stress: Push beyond limits to observe graceful degradation and recovery.
- Spike: Sudden surges (campaigns, viral spikes).
- Soak/Endurance: Long runs to detect memory leaks and resource exhaustion.
- Scalability/Capacity: Determine how throughput and latency evolve with added resources.
Metrics that Matter
Track response times (P50/P95/P99), throughput (RPS), error rates, CPU/memory/IO usage, GC pauses, and queue depths. Tie results to SLOs and business KPIs (checkout conversion, time to first trade, etc.).
Environment & Data
Use production-like infra (autoscaling, caches, CDNs) and realistic datasets. Warm caches; test with think time and pacing to mimic user behavior. Instrument APM to attribute bottlenecks to code, DB, or network.
Automation & Governance
Run lightweight smoke tests in CI; schedule heavier suites nightly. Gate releases on critical NFRs. After fixes, re-test to confirm improvements and prevent regressions.
Findings to Recommendations
Every report should answer: what’s slow, why, and how to fix it—query optimization, caching strategy, pooling, async patterns, or infra right-sizing. Include cost-to-serve insights to balance performance and spend.
If you’re comparing software testing services or a QA testing company, ensure they treat performance testing as integral to software quality assurance, not an afterthought. That’s the hallmark of the best software testing company approach.
