Performance Engineering enables Performance Testing to be run as a part of Continuous Deployment and DevOps pipelines, allowing early visibility and regular comparison against a baseline.
Performance / load tests are usually performed once applications have been through a QA cycle and often just prior to deployment, which has always been well suited to waterfall developments or Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) implementations. In today's world, for applications in development this approach does not slot into the DevOps model of continuous development / test / release and can lead to significant costs when performance issues are identified late in the cycle. Just as with functional issues, the longer they are left unresolved, the more embedded they become and the more complex and costly they are to fix.
Performance Engineering enables a shift-left approach to load testing, which encourages the creation of a smaller, more agile test pack, run regularly and maintained alongside the application as it evolves. Integrating performance tests into the release cycle allows regular load tests to be run automatically, as a part of an automated regression pack, in a similar way to automated tests run at unit and system levels.
A Performance engineering approach can not only identify issues at the component level as applications are built, but also acts as the building blocks for end to end, user journey focused load testing, on complete applications on infrastructure comparable with production.
Implementing a Performance Engineering Framework
Prolifics Testing offer a service where we work with our customers' technical teams to implement performance engineering frameworks, as a quick-start to put in place building blocks for regular, smaller tests to be run. Our team can design and implement integrated performance tests into your development process, allowing development teams better, earlier visibility of potential performance problems identifying and fixing issues at source.
A baseline of application performance can then be used to compare the results from each iteration of tests, so the adherence to non-functional requirements and Service Level Agreements can be measured during development, against anticipated user volumes.
This approach fits in well with Agile / DevOps practices and helps ensure good performance is built into applications at a much earlier stage, with regular measurement against known benchmarks a vital element.
Delivery Models
Our delivery models for Performance Engineering include a combination of support and enablement for customer technical teams. Once initial packs are developed, our service includes handover, full training and ongoing support to suit your needs, the costs of specialised resources with limited deployment, only when needed.
We also provide a fully supported outsourced model, where test suites are maintained as applications are developed, running regular remote tests that are triggered by code deployments, with results provided.
Tools
We offer performance tool suitability advice and proof of concept for tools, depending on the application (whether desktop or web) and the skillset of the team, as well as internal tool preferences. Prolifics Testing is a gold partner of MicroFocus (now Opentext) the vendor of LoadRunner, primarily for desktop applications. We also specialise in using open-source tooling for performance, mainly Apache JMeter.
Please get in touch for more information, or a no obligation conversation about your requirements.
