Introduction to performance testing | Why it is important

Performance testing: Why is it complex

It is sometimes inaccurately assumed that performance testing is just as complex as some other test types, and thus any tester without any performance test experience can easily conduct performance testing.

Although each type of testing has its unique challenges, the level of complexity that a performance test requires tends to be much higher.

Reasons why performance testing can be complex and challenging:

• Performance testing generally tends to be towards the end of the site development and release cycle.

  Delays in earlier stages of the development cycle result in less time for conducting performance testing, thus making the task even more challenging. In addition to allocating sufficient time and a contingency buffer, every attempt should be made to start performance testing as early in the development cycle as possible.

• Performance testing may not be possible on the actual production hardware and equivalent requirements (or targets for the test results) may be unavailable or unclear for new or custom features.

  In such a case a correlation formula will need to be developed by some trial and error method to translate results obtained from the test environment to the production environment.

• Performance testing requires a diverse technical skill set.

  Performance testers should posses system administration skills for various platforms, software products, and technologies.

• Performance testing requires troubleshooting skills.

  Defects found during performance testing are often severe, yet difficult to isolate and fix. Often such defects will be difficult to reproduce as well.

• Performance testing usually requires building automation scripts and generating large amounts of realistic data before any testing may be started.

  You may even need to create utilities for generating test data.

• The amount of skills one requires to perform a system test takes time to acquire.