F13-Pre-1: Performance Testing: Critical Concepts and Skills

Track: Performance Testing

The most effective performance engineers are required to know not only how to design and conduct performance testing, but they also must master the rationales behind why we employ performance testing and what value is derived from the practices. This course provides an introduction to the core concepts involved in designing, developing and implementing performance testing. Learn why certain deliverables should come out of a performance test and how they are made valuable to others in the organization. Learn why certain kinds of performance tests are effective and how to setup and configure tools to conduct different types of tests. Using a combination of real-world stories, interactive group analysis and hands-on exercises, you will be challenged to understand the same kinds of problems, decisions, and performance experiences most often found in your own work as a performance tester. The class is divided equally between theoretical learning through a series of discussion-based exercises and also hands-on work with the basic tools required to build performance testing skills. At the end of the class, you will have developed a practical strategy for performance testing and the skills to get started implementing a performance test. It’s not enough to know how to test, you should know why you test.

Workshop Takeaways:

  • Concepts around the value of performance testing: the objectives; the outcomes and the benefits
  • Concepts around the performance testing process: design; planning; preparation; execution and reporting
  • Skills to design a performance test: objectives, workloads, automation, monitoring and reports
  • Skills to construct different performance test types: why they are different and how to construct them
  • Experience in performance testing: running a test; monitoring the system and producing results

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Session Speaker:

Mark TomlinsonMark Tomlinson – Practitioner of Performance Testing, West Evergreen Consulting, LLC
Mark is a performance engineering and software testing consultant. His career began in 1992 with a comprehensive two-year test for a life-critical transportation system, a project which captured his interest for software testing, quality assurance, and test automation. That first test project sought to prevent trains from running into each other — and Mark has metaphorically been preventing “train wrecks” for his customers for the past 20 years. He has broad experience with real-world scenario testing of large and complex systems and is regarded as a leading expert in software testing automation with a specific emphasis on performance. For the majority of Mark’s career he has worked for companies as a testing practitioner and consultant using the leading products for performance testing, profiling and measurement. He has also consistently established close ties and relationships with the major vendors who create these tools. Mark worked for six years at Microsoft Corporation as a performance consultant and engineer in the Microsoft Services Labs, in the Enterprise Engineering Center and in the SQL Server labs. His efforts to foster the success of Microsoft’s top-tier Enterprise customers was focused on their early adoption of Microsoft products as part of mission-critical operations. In 2008, as the LoadRunner Product Manager at HP Software, Mark led the team to deliver leading innovations for performance testing and engineering as part of HP”s suite of performance validation and management products. Mark now offers coaching, training and consulting to help customers adopt modern performance testing and engineering strategies, practices and behaviors for better performing technology systems.