Avoiding Common Performance Testing and Tuning Mistakes

Don't make the same mistakes deployment engineers and performance test teams usually make. Deployment engineers usually construct the system and perform the functional tests. Next the engineers hand over the system to the performance testing team. The testing team develops test plans and test scripts based on the targeted load assumptions. The project manager usually gives the testing team only a few hours or a few days to conduct the performance tests. Using this approach, the testing team usually encounters unexpected behaviors during the tests.

The testing team then realizes that performance tuning was not done been before the tests. Tuning is hastily done, but problems still persist. The testing team starts to experiment with different parameter settings and configurations. This frequently leads to more problems which jeopardize the schedule. Even when the testing team successfully produces a performance report, the report usually fails to cover test cases and information crucial to capacity planning and production launch support. For example, the report often does not capture the system capacity, request breakdowns, and the system stability under stress.

You can avoid these performance testing and tuning mistakes by using a systematic approach, and by allocating adequate project resources and time.