Why do performance testers need to know business? - The Performance Testing Zone


Well the question does seem easy enough at the first look. This is what the managers across the board have been crying hoarse. Testers need to know business. Or else how can they test? Agreed. But when it comes to performance testers, does this hold good?
From a performance testing standpoint, what does a normal performance testers do? In almost all cases, the only way where the critical business flows are identified is via the hits on the web server. If it is a new application, most of the time, the business will have a fair idea of which flows will be critical and those will be handed down to the performance testers.
Now our performance tester will come in and write scripts, designs the scenario based on the requirements and executes the test. During the analysis, the following things will be looked at.
1. Server Health
2. Performance issues in code
3. SLAs
So keeping this in mind where does the business come in? Does it really matter to the performance tester to understand the business? The only that matters to him is whether the SLA has been achieved or if there are some hidden performance bugs which may crop up apart from the server health. Everything related to do with the technology and almost nothing with business except the SLAs, if there are any. Experienced performance testers, do not even need to see the flow and they can make the script robust. On the other hand a functional tester cannot do without knowing the business, with the automation engineer falling somewhere in between these two extremes. Is this the correct way of looking at it?
Now coming to the answer to the question in the title of the post. Every business for its survival have to create a positive impression on its customers/clients. Any customer who interacts via a business transaction takes with him/her an experience.  And this experience is what makes the customer comes back again and again building a relationship with the business. Out in a retail shop, businesses control this by having good sales force, good ambience, etc. However, online the only experience that a user can get is the look and feel of the application, ease of traversing and the speed with which the customer’s job is done. Thus performance testers directly impact the bottom-line of the business as they are responsible for this user experience. Thus it becomes imperative for performance testers to know the business, from where the revenue comes to ensure the application creates a good user experience which in turn helps the business to grow!
PS: The other testing is also equally important. However, I just wanted to bring out the importance of a business knowledge for performance testers and their impact on business which is much more than what most performance testers tend to believe.

Source: Dishit D

Comments

  1. Sa28/12/10

    A new follower to ur blog... Nice compilations!

    ReplyDelete

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