Myths About Software Performance Testing

Introduction

Time is money, the old proverb holds good to end users when performance testing saves them time in their software application workflows. Performance testing is type of testing which tests the non-functional aspect of the software. The importance of performance testing in the whole testing life cycle is many fold, more and more emphasis is given to it. However, there are few myths around performance testing which are discussed today.

Performance Testing is to be performed after Functional Testing

While Functional Testing is at the heart of the testing process, performance testing is the rate at which blood flowing  through the heart. Performance testing should be also be tested and software optimised alongside functional tests. Also, performance bugs when found at the end of the testing phase gets less time to fix when compared to finding performance bug early during the testing in software development lifecycle.

Performance Testing is one time process

Like functional regression testing, when software is evolving it needs to be checked for non-functional bugs continuously. Performance tests are not done just to fulfil the criterion of definition of done but in continuous fashion to improve the non functional aspect of software.

Performance Testing needs to be performed with fancy tools

Although, performance testing tools are required for sophisticated testing for unearthing performance bugs, it can also be done by some lightweight tools like tracing performance through software logs, performance testing of critical scenarios through stop watch. Monitoring network and operating system resource utilisation by already available tools in modern day operating system.

Performance Testing is only about response time

The primary goal of performance at times is reducing the response time but it should also consider meeting other criterion like optimising the resource utilisation of network and operating system and other resources that its consuming. All the resources that the software consumes along with it's optimisation with acceptable response time while meeting the functional and reliability factors should be considered.

Performance testing is similar to functional testing activities

Over the years performance testing has evolved into more specialised field performance engineering, where more sophisticated tools and processes are used to monitor performance testing and best practices in performance testing are used across industry. For functional testing the expectation is clear as to satisfy the functional requirement specification. However meeting the performance expectation or reliability requirements is not straight forward and through analysis and efforts are required to identify and fix the performance bugs and aligning with industry wide best practices to meet the goals.