Performance Test Life Cycle

1. POC - Proof of Concept
2. NFR - Non Functional Requirements Gathering
3. Test Plan
4. Work Load Model / Load Model / Volume Model / Volume Matrix
5. Scripting & Enhancements
6. Test Data
7. Scenario Design & Execution
8. Analysis
9. Reporting & Recommendation.

1. Proof of Concept (POC):
     As part of POC, I will try to understand the application architecture, what kind of
application is this? Which technology they used to develop this application. Which
communication mechanism they used to develop this application and complexity of the  application.
I will try to identify which tool is compatible for this application, if it is load runner which protocol is compatible for this application, whether it is a single/multiple protocols.
As part of POC, I am going to record simple business scenarios, execute with minimal users & report the response times to the client.Based on the above POC, Client has to understand which tool he supposed to buy, which  protocol bundle he supposed to buy & how many labor hours required to finish this application.

2. NFR – Non Functional Requirements
 We have to prepare NFR document with a help of BA (Business Analyst) people or project team people.
NFR contains CBT’s (Critical Business Transactions),peak hours, half peak hours(low load),expected average response times, no. of transactions per hour & hardware threshold statistics like CPU, Memory, Heap, Swapping.We have to gather and what kind of tests we supposed to perform in terms of availability,
serviceability, scalability, recoverability, baseline, benchmark, failover, abnormality & spike.After prepare NFR document, we have to get it approved by project team, architects, infrastructure team, NW team and stakeholders.

What is your approach to gather NFR, if client doesn’t know anything about performance
testing?

Scenario-1:
If Application is already in production
Sol: Get the production log files for 1 year historical data using Site analytical tools (or) splunk
tool & try to identify top 5 usage days from that how many no. of visitors accessing that
application, how many no. of page views are happening, which JSP/ASP pages are mostly
accessed by end users & from which region they are accessing the application.
Based on the visitors you can identify no. of users, based on the page views you can
identify no. of transactions.
Based on the JSP/ASP pages you can identify the CBT’s, based on the IP address we can
identify the location/region &conduct baseline testing to identify the expected response time (or) to baseline the application.
Note:Whenever we don’t have (SLA’s: Service Level Agreement) expected response times, we have to conduct baseline test.

Scenario-2:
Client doesn’t know anything & application not in production.

Solution: Get the competitor statistics and conduct the PT
Sol: Using N/W traffic utilities get the competitor statistics & identify NFR’s in terms of peak hours, half peak hours, no. of users, no. of page views from which location they are accessing the application, which pages mostly access by end users & what are the expected response times for every page.

Scenario-3:
Client doesn’t know about performance testing & application not in production & we don’t know have a competitor in market.
Sol: Try to understand the Core Business of the application and convert core business to Online  Business. By converting identify how many no. of users, no. of transactions, CBT’s, from which region they are accessing the application and conduct the base line test to derive SLA’s.

Generic Case Study:
I have an application stake holders & project is not in a situation to provide the requirement. So we approached Business Analyst (BA) People to finalize the NFR.

3. Test Plan
Test Plan is a road map of our test,
Test Plan contains objective of the test, scope, items out of scope, procedure, approach, test data, CBT’s, types of testing, monitoring, application architecture, tool architecture, deliverables, roles & responsibilities, environment, risks & migrations, entry criteria, exit criteria, prerequisites & assumption.

Entry Criteria:
Whenever the Pre-requisites are satisfied that is called Entry Criteria.

Exit Criteria:
Whenever derived statistics are meeting expected statistics that can be considered as Exit Criteria.
Note: Test strategy will describe approach & procedure of the test.

4. Work Load Model
Work Load Model is a heart of all the documents which will be lead you
“How to test that application?”
& “What to test that application?”
Work Load Model contains CBT’s, business flows for every CBT’s, no. of transactions,
types of testing, load distribution based on types of testing.While preparing Work Load Model we have to consider Pacing & Think time calculation to generate ‘Anticipated Load’.Work load model will assist you to design the scenario.

5.Recording and Enhancements
Protocol: Protocol is a set of rules.
Famous Protocols in current market:
Citrix ICA: When ever application published in Citrix environment we have to Citrix ICA
protocol.
Flex: Flex (Rich internet applications) is a product of Adobe. If the application front end is developed in flex then use Flex protocol.
Ajax TruClient: If you would like to measure the response times which includes server side and browser response times (Java script execution).
RTE (Remote Terminal Emulator): If the application is developed in Unix Environment. We have to use RTE Protocol.
Ex: Cursor based application, Mainframe application.
SAP Family: if the application developed in ECC and netviewer and dynapro portal we can use these protocols.
Web (HTTP/HTML):It is famous among all the protocols. If the application uses http protocol then use this protocol.
Web Services: It is also one of the famous protocols. If the application uses API’s or web services or xmls or jsons or restful xmls then we have to use this protocol.
Web (Click and script): It will record browser specific requests

6. Test Data: Simply we can define this as the data which is required to test an application is called test data. In this phase we will identify the test data which is required and how much is test data is required.

7. Scenario design & Execution : In this phase using controller component we will design the scenarios and also execute the same.Once the preparation of test data and workload is ready then we have to design scenario in the controller.

Based on the requirement given by the customer we can design the tests and we will execute the same in the controller.

8. Analysis: Once the test execution got completed we have to come to this phase. Using the loadrunner component Analyzer we will analyze the results. To analyze the results we will pepare the report to compare derived statistics with the expected statistics.In this phase we can see all the metrics , graphs , 90^th percentile etc.