As the CEO or the CTO of an organisation, you will be constantly challenged to balance the demands from various aspects of your product. One of those demands will be about performance, and performance has various facets to it. One of the key things in performance is scalability, so let’s talk about “Software Testing: Scalability Considerations” in this blog.
Scalability could be complex when you have third-party integrations to your product. When the third-party software that you heavily rely upon does not deliver to your peak expectations, you usually approach the third-party with a request to reconsider THEIR design so that their product meets that need. More often than not, the third-party would come back and say that they can support only a fragment of your scalability expectations, and you got to wait till their design changes. What a nightmare it would be, because you are not only losing time, but your software design also has to change every time the third-party software changes their design.
It has happened to me in one of the products that I worked with as a performance tester. It was so unfortunate that we had to change the design mid-way, delaying the delivery, causing frustration to everyone involved.
These kind of scenarios need be avoided as much as possible, for which there are some strategies involved which might prove useful. To discuss them for your organisation, feel free to reach out to me.
Here are some key aspects of performance that you should not miss in your implementation and testing:
- Whether your product can scale to the expected maximum load in terms of no. of users, no. of sessions, data processed, etc.
- Whether your product can withstand above and beyond the maximum load in terms of various parameters mentioned above and be able to handle the stress
- Have you carefully designed your key performance metrics that are relevant for your scenario and customers
- Even if you use automation and simulations to emulate real-world situations, how close to reality are they and whether their functionality is sufficient enough to simulate real world scenarios
- Whether you have planned for capacity while using infrastructure needed for the performance testing
- Reliability considerations and fulfilling the expectations
As you can see, the performance requirements need be carefully analyzed, planned, and implemented. Hope you got some inputs on “Software Testing: Scalability Considerations” topic. For detailed analysis of your performance situation and forming a performance strategy, feel free to reach out to me.