How to start Performance

Testing project?
A practical guide to performance testers

Author: NaveenKumar Namachivayam

Writer at www.QAInsights.com

 Send business proposal to the

clients

 Once your client agreed, start

collecting Non-Functional
Requirements

 Non-Functional requirements such

as Response Time, Throughput,
Transactions per sec, CPU usage,
Memory, Disk, Network etc.

 Industry standards like Response

Time < 5 seconds, CPU and
Memory usage < 60%

 Identify Critical Scenarios

 If your client is not able to provide

critical scenarios and workload
models, we can derive it from the
server logs.

 Tools like 123loganalyzer, Deep

Log Analyzer, AWstats, Analog etc.

 If no server logs available, analyze

the business applications and
identify the critical scenarios.

 E.g. Banking application.

Critical Scenarios will be
1. Login
2. Check Balance
3. Apply for Loans
4. Pay Bills
...etc...

 Identify the performance testing

tool

 Record your critical scenarios

 Enhance your scripts such as

1. Inserting Transactions
2. Correlations
3. Think Time
4. Run time settings
5. Browser settings
6. Cache settings
... etc...
then perform a unit test to baseline the
script

 Create Scenarios to execute. Define

following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Ramp-up period
Steady State
Ramp-down period
Loops
Mix of transactions
IP Spoofing

...etc...

Execute the scenario at least three cycles.

1. Baseline Test
Perform the test with 15-20% of target load
2. Load Test
Perform with actual load for three cycles.
Steady State duration: min. 1 hr
3. Stress Test
Perform load test and then slowly ramp-up the
load step-by-step. Disable Think time and Cache
settings
Steady State duration: min. 2-3 hr
4. Endurance Test
Perform load test for 10-14 hours to identify
memory leaks

Collect metrics such as

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Response Time
Throughput
Transactions per second
CPU Usage
Memory
Disk utilization

Prepare Report
Baseline the report
Compare with Benchmarks and previous results

Thank you!
Happy Performance Testing!
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