Steve Weisfeldt

Developing with Performance Testing in Mind A tester friend of mine recently came to me with a complaint that I think is fairly common in the testing community. He said, "Every time there is a new release of the software for us to test, we have to rework our testing scripts." I've heard this complaint throughout my career, not only in performance testing but in functional testing with automation tools as well. This state of affairs arises from three fairly straightforward observations: Change is inevitable. Everything changes, and in no industry is this more apparent than software development. It makes no sense for testers to ask developers to stop changing the code, but it does make sense to encourage wise changes. Developers and testers don't always communicate well. The proverbial wall between developers and testers is still quite formidable. When developers throw... (more)

Best Practices for Load Testing Mobile Applications | Part 2

Mobile applications and mobile websites have become a major channel for conducting business, improving employee efficiency, communicating, and reaching consumers. In Part I of this article we discussed the differences between testing traditional and mobile applications, specific challenges associated with mobile load testing, mobile testing basics and best practices for recording mobile load test scenarios. In this Part 2 of the article, we will look at how to conduct realistic tests and how to best analyze the results. How to Run Realistic Load Tests Once you've recorded a mobi... (more)

The Importance of Accurately Modeling User Interactions in Performance Testing

Load testing, perhaps more than any other form of testing, is one of those activities that you either choose to do well or risk a result that leaves you worse off than not doing it at all. Half-hearted attempts at load testing yield "results," but too often those results are inaccurate, leading to a false sense of security for anyone who trusts them. This, in turn, leads to the release of applications that are not adequately tested and that experience performance problems soon after entering production. I was reminded of this not long ago, when I worked with a customer who relat... (more)

Why “Holiday Mobile Performance” Is an Oxymoron

Personally, I'm more of a last-minute holiday shopper, but nonetheless, there I was being dragged out to the brick and mortar stores on Black Friday. Given that my role seemed to be limited to that of manual laborer ("Honey, can you carry all this for me?"), I had a lot of time to people watch the zillions of other consumers doing their shopping. And I noticed a very common occurrence - something I don't think I'd seen much of before: People using their mobile devices to help them shop. Whether it was to figure out where the sales were, to compare prices among other retailers, to... (more)

Best Practices for Load Testing Mobile Applications | Part I

Mobile applications and mobile websites have become a major channel for conducting business, improving employee efficiency, communicating, and reaching consumers. In the past, mobile played a smaller role in business applications, so performance issues and outages were less of a concern. This is no longer the case. Today, performance problems with mobile applications lead directly to revenue loss, brand damage, and diminished employee productivity. Part I of this article discusses the differences between testing traditional web and mobile applications, specific challenges assoc... (more)