Putting Agile and Performance Testing together

Performance testing is critical in the development cycle of any software application,

especially when considering future iterations and updated releases. At every step of the agile
process, performance testing needs to be a priority for both developers and testers. Therefore,
its very important to understand how to properly integrate such testing in an agile workflow.
What sorts of issues are commonly faced during Performance Testing?
Given the constant pressure of deadlines in our era of smartphones and rapid technological
obsolescence, therell be a number of issues to deal with. The essence of this kind of testing
is the emulation of real world behavior and the subsequent evaluation of how the application
responds. In both new and legacy systems, accurate modeling of user behavior is a major
obstacle in the development process. Its also fairly difficult to rely on data generated in
limited test environments, when predicting app performance in more multi-layered,
complicated, and dynamic scenarios.
The need for Agility
The market demands higher quality apps in ever shortening time periods, so organizations are
sufficiently motivated to adopt the Agile methodology in their app development process. In a
waterfall model, performance testing tends to be conducted at the very end of the life cycle,
but when it comes to the agile process, the exact opposite takes place; performance testing is
implemented right at the beginning, in the earliest stages of the app design. This makes
perfect sense the design itself determines the function and potential robustness of the app,
so integrating performance testing from the outset ensures that app quality and behavior is
assessed and verified from start to finish. Analysis, design, coding, and testing all take place
simultaneously.

Putting Agile and Performance Testing together

To ensure maximum efficiency in an agile scenario, identifying and resolving performance
issues needs to be done at the level of your base code, to keep the rest of your pipeline free of
any bottlenecks. So there are three stages to go through:
1. Optimization: Tests are implemented to get rid of issues at the base code level
2. Component testing: Resolves bugs at the level of app components
3. App flow testing: Isolation and testing of crucial app flows determine UX consistency at
difference load levels

Different Testing Models

Primarily, there are three models of iterative performance testing in agile environments:
1. On Demand: This is the general starting point for organizations that want to fuse
performance testing with agile processes. To put it briefly, developers need to be fully
responsible for testing and tuning at all levels, under the supervision of a dedicated tester
who takes care of performance evaluation.
2. On Retainer: In this model, a tester is assigned to every app development project, who is not
wholly committed to each task, but is on standby whenever developers require deeper
technical assistance or bug resolution.
3. Full immersion: This model is for companies that are serious about the delivery of quality
apps, and that has now dedicated themselves to perfecting their performance testing.
Testers are designated full time to monitor and verify each stage of development, and also
to manage and orchestrate all the performance testing activities from beginning to end.

A Summary of Performance Testing Benefits in Agile Processes

It should be clear enough now that performance testing in your Agile environment has a
number of benefits:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Code optimization at the start of the project streamlines workflow in later phases
App rejection risk is reduced due to stronger code and lower likelihood of memory leaks
The duration for tuning and retesting is cut down significantly
Higher chance of meeting product release dates
Elimination of bugs in later phases
Reuse of performance scripts allows you to save a lot of effort during the entire
performance testing cycle

Get in touch with Gallops Agile Test Specialists who can guide you well on Agile
Performance testing and on the realities of agile testing and help you truly realize the
potential of an agile environment. Contact us today.

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