Meet our Consultants – Robert Alimardani (Performance Test Consultant)

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What is performance testing?

I shall start with a metaphor to help explain. Imagine you’re at a theme park, and there’s a really cool roller coaster everyone is talking about. Performance testing is like checking if that roller coaster can handle a full load of excited riders without breaking down or causing long wait times. You want to make sure that everyone gets to enjoy the ride smoothly and without any hiccups, no matter how many people are on the ride… and this is the concept of performance testing.

Performance testing evaluates how a system performs under various conditions. These conditions include speed, which is all about how quickly your system can respond to user requests or tasks, similar to responsiveness which is how quickly your system reacts to user interactions. Stability ensures that your system can consistently handle its workload without crashing or encountering errors and scalability relates to the capacity your system can handle without crashing before the need to increase system resources to accommodate that increased load.

What is performance engineering?

Continuing with the previous analogy, if performance testing is like making sure that the roller coaster runs smoothly with passengers. Performance engineering is the process of testing all aspects of the roller coaster’s safety, before letting anyone ride. You’ve got to do test runs and tune-ups at each stage of the build. You load up the carts with varying weights to mimic real riders before sending them around the track.

Performance engineering identifies issues early, delivering end-to-end system optimisation through continuous testing at every step of the development process. This results in improved product quality due to the detection of issues in earlier stages, preventing costly performance-related issues that may arise post-deployment, saving time, and resources fixing them later.

Client benefits to performance test

Performance testing is like giving your website, application, or system a test drive on the busiest day of the year before making it available to the public. You want to make sure that it can handle the traffic without crashing or slowing down, so that everyone gets a good, reliable experience, leaving you with happy customers. Happy customers consequently lead to better user satisfaction and retention. There are many examples where performance testing and web optimisation have improved revenue and retention. I was part of a team to improve performance for a large retailer. We were able to increase the conversion rate by 7% by simply cutting the average page load time by just 0.85 seconds.

The BBC has seen that they lose an additional 10% of users for every additional second it takes for their site to load. Every aspect of improving performance has many positive outcomes. So, overall performance testing provides clients with confidence in the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of their software systems which ultimately contributes to their success in the market.

Do you have any examples of one of your engagements?

I remember one of my first-ever performance engagements over 10 years ago; I was working for a large, multinational insurance company. My performance tests highlighted intermittent failures. After I had analysed the results, it became apparent that the failures were all originating from one web server. It transpired that the web server wasn’t configured correctly and that this one failing web server was stopping any user directed to this web server from purchasing insurance. Finding any issue that directly correlates to the loss of revenue is a big win. The client was obviously over the moon with the results and immediately made the necessary updates to the web server. This was such an enlightening experience for me in one of my earliest performance engagements on how a simple performance test can highlight such incredibly big issues.

What if a client doesn’t do or care about performance testing?

In my experience, I have seen many companies’ performance tests just as a box-ticking exercise. However, it is so much more than that. All the data collected from performance testing shows that if a user encounters a slow-performing website they will leave or worse leave but continue the purchase on a competitor’s site. I know that when I encounter a slow website, I’ll just move on to another link which is usually their competitor.

A well-performing system gives you that competitive edge by attracting and retaining users who value speed and reliability.

What makes Ten10’s performance testing/engineering different?

Ten10 is a leader and trusted partner in the field of performance testing and DevOps. We combine them both to be able to effectively tool the environment and provide near-instant feedback on how well their system is performing. We also work closely with in-house delivery teams to resolve any issues identified.

Our track record speaks volumes, boasting a history of successful projects across diverse industries and our team is full of seasoned professionals who excel in identifying performance issues efficiently. We are tool agnostic allowing flexibility to adapt to various technologies, ensuring that the best tool is chosen for each client’s scenario. It fosters innovation and reduces dependency on specific vendors or platforms. Tools we tend to use more often are JMeter which is a very common tool in the performance testing world and is open-source, coupled with other open-source tools such as Grafana and Influx DB to visualise the results. Although, we are also very happy to use any existing in-house client performance tools.

On many occasions, clients ask us to implement the testing infrastructure, with detailed handovers and in-house training to allow continuous testing once the engagement has ended, which is fantastic. Our objective isn’t to just give the client a detailed performance analysis but also the ability to continue the performance cycle in-house with confidence.