Performance Testing in Agile Environment – A Deeper Outlook

There has been a sea change in the way Software and Applications are developed during the last decade. Many enterprises have moved away from conventional waterfall models to more flexible Agile approaches. With development being done in iterative models, testing, especially for the application performance in line with the development process is crucial.

Performance, without any doubt, has been the single largest factor to make the application a winner in the marketplace. In this article, we will have a deeper look into performance testing of applications in Agile environments.

Overview on Agile Methodology with respect to Performance Testing

Scrum is an Agile methodology most commonly used and some enterprises use Extreme Programming also. The Scrum model consists of a Scrum team with members like Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developers, Testers and Technical Writers. All the requirements gathered are framed up into Sprints and testing has to be completed for each sprint along with Performance testing. It is always good to schedule all performance testing priorities on the scrum board such that efforts required can be identified through planning poker exercise. The importance of Performance testing engineering principles should be set and planned in respective sprints and based on the prioritization they should be planned and completed accordingly. Moreover, Performance of an application will be the major factor and hence cannot be neglected.

Agile Project Methodology with Respect to Performance Testing

Significance of Performance Testing in AGILE Environment

Many times under agile environments, a lot of performance issues are identified that adversely affect the selling functionality of the application as end to end Performance testing of the application has not been done. Moreover, some bugs might be impacting the actual performance that need to be resolved on high priority. Typically, it should be seen that for critical agile projects, aim should be framed to perform performance test every sprint wherein the concerned project team should prioritize performance defects in a phased manner. However, the project manger should deep dive into and see to it that the priority issues are quickly fixed to avoid major delays in the release to the end user community.

Overview of Various Performance Testing Activities in Agile Environment:

Factors Affecting Performance Testing in Agile Environment

1. Key factor for successful Performance Testing is involving the performance testers at the beginning of Sprint such that, at the end the development cycle, one can assure quality product and ensures its release without any delays
2. Unavailability of trained Performance testing resources especially for testing critical projects
3. Lack of flexibility of Performance testing tools as claimed by vendors
4. Trial adoptions in certain critical Agile projects might also lead to some specific performance issues cropping up
5. In certain Agile projects, criteria for performance testing might not be properly planned for every sprint
6. Lack of prioritization of Project teams to handle performance defects and take action quickly

Some of the Leading tools for Performance Testing include:

• Load Runner, most commonly used
• Few Open source tools are JMeter, Grinder etc.
• Many tools available for Cloud – based Load testing

Cigniti Technologies has marked presence as a pure play independent testing services provider with over a decade of experience in serving clients in North America. Cigniti’s performance engineering teams have impeccable experience in providing cutting edge performance testing services spanning across client-server, web based, distributed, mobile and cloud applications. Our team has extensive expertise in databases, high volume transaction systems and related technologies. Moreover, all your performance related tasks will be dealt with a collaborative exercise that connects different teams and stake holders in the most efficient manner.