A Checklist for elicitation of the Performance Testing Requirements.

Performance Testing of an application involves the various phases outlined below. This article is an attempt to   provide a list of questionnaire that can help the test leaders/managers and testers to elicitate the performance testing requirements. This information is most important to know before starting with the performance test. Note that the questionnaire provided here is generic list of questions that is common to most of the applications. However, it need to be tailored based on the nature of the application under test. Usually I use this questionnaire by sending it to the stake holders of the application for answering. I have been using this questionnaire successfully for conducting performance tests.

性能测试是非功能测试重要的一部分, 试着提出问题,通过回答问题从而明确性能测试需求:

 1.       Identify performance benchmarks/acceptance goal

Identify the key business critical scenarios

Identify the workload and usage pattern for simulation

Identify the key performance metrics/parameters to be monitored/measured

Identify the SLAs for performance testing

2.       Setup test environment

Identify the physical test environment including hardware, software and network configurations

Identify the tools and other resources required for conducting the performance test

3.       Plan and design tests

Setup performance test lab

Plan the tests in accordance with the identified acceptance criteria

Develop performance test script for the identified key business scenarios

Execute the script for one user and unit test to ensure script robustness and correctness

4.       Simulate load

Simulate the workload by executing performance test scripts adhering to the test plan

Monitor the resources utilization and the key performance parameters such as throughput, hits/second etc., during the test

5.       Analyze report and retest

Analyze the collected performance test results and identify bottlenecks and errors

Report the performance bottlenecks and errors with possible remediation

Plan for retest after the identified bottlenecks are resolved.

Performance Testing Requirement Questionnaire

1. Please provide the URI's and credentials of the application for testing
2. Please provide the test environment (Hardware and Software) configuration.
3. Where is the test environment setup? – Inside the Firewall in a isolated LAN environment or outside the firewall.
4. What technologies have been used to develop the application?
5. What are the interfaces of the application? e.g., Payment gateways, web services etc.,
6. Briefly describe the business/domain of the application.
7. Is the application already in production? - Is this performance testing being conducted pre-production or post-production?
8. Are the web server logs for the application available? Applicable only if the application is already in production.
9. What are the critical workflows of the application to be considered as candidates for performance testing?
10. What is the expected workload (number of simultaneous virtual users) to be tested?
11. What is the average session duration of a user? - Average time a user would be logged into the application.
12. How many hours in a day the application would be available/accessed by the users?
13. Do you have any specific performance objective(SLAs) for this test? E.g. 1000 Invoices to be processed in a Day
14. Is test data required for performance testing available in adequate quantity in the required format.
15. Does the test team members have the  necessary privileges for the test server machines.
16. Do you aware of any performance problems in the application that is experienced by the users or observed by other stake holders?

--LN

http://lmohan.blogspot.com/2010/01/checklist-for-performance-testing.html