Application Performance Testing ChecklistA typical enterprise has thousands of applications. In a business unit, there can be several hundred applications. As the business continues to evolve and change, so will the applications evolve and change to support the business’s needs. The changes made to the application may increase the risk to performance, scalability, or stability. Depending on the business’s tolerance for disruption, these changes may require some level of performance and scalability testing to verify the application can still process the accepted business volumes while staying within service level agreements.

Not all applications require performance testing, and the same application may not require repeated performance testing for every release. The selection process for performance testing frequency must consider user population, application type, technology, changes to features and function, and how non-functional requirements are monitored in the software development life cycle.

User population The people who use your application are critical to the decision. Some key information to capture is: How many people use the application on average and during peak time? Who uses this application? Are they external or internal users? How is the application accessed? What is the behavior of the users’ workload? In an analysis, you may ask: What would be the business impact if this application exhibited performance problems?

Application type The application type itself can dominate the risk factors. Questions to ask in this area include: Is the application an online retail website? Is there both a desktop and mobile website/mobile app? How important is this application to the business? Is the application a key component in the enterprise architecture that other applications use? If so, this is deemed a critical application and may require performance testing for every release.

Application technology The state of the application technology stack can be a significant risk factor. If the underlying technology is stable and is well known to the application development team, then a performance test might not be required. However, if a new technology is being introduced or replacing one of the tiers, there may be a great risk and thus testing is required. Likewise, a significant upgrade to a vendor product could warrant performance testing.

Application features and functions The amount of modified code or new code in an application can create new performance risks. Understanding the impact of the changes is critical to determining if performance testing is required. Potential analysis questions include: How has the new or modified business feature changed the behavior of the application? Were the changes extensive and across the client, application services and database? And also, what percentage of the code was impacted by the new or modified services?

Software development process Analysts should consider questions such as: Does the software development process track non-functional requirements during the lifecycle, and are the requirements communicated from the requirements, design, development, testing and deployment teams? Have key business transactions or services been identified with stringent response time or throughput requirements? What architectural risk analysis, prototyping, or other types of testing have been done that may mitigate the need for formal performance and scalability testing efforts?

Production issues with the last release Recent history can be an indicator for the future. If the application went into production and the last release had performance, scalability, or stability issues, then it may require a closer look at the application to determine if the issues have been truly mitigated. Otherwise, performance testing is required.

The schedule of performance testsApplications will undergo performance testing at different times during their lifetime. The application can be tested before it is ever released into production, performance testing can be scheduled for every major release, or performance testing can be scheduled based on the extent of the application’s changes.

What factors should you consider when selecting an application for performance testing?

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Completing this performance testing checklist will help you allocate the right resources to the right projects and applications. Performance engineering and performance testing should not be done in isolation or behind closed doors. The selection process and the risks must be visible, and there must be communication between the performance team and the business, ultimately to answer the questions of “why are we testing?” and “what are we getting from those tests?”