S11-Pre-2: Arming Yourself for Performance Testing: War Stories from the Trenches

Track: Pre-Conference Workshop

If you’re new to performance testing, you may have a shiny new weapon (perf testing tool) but still feel unsure how to prepare for battle, defend yourself, or even hit the target. If you’re a battle-scarred performance tester, you’ve probably discovered that every battle brings unseen enemies, unique terrain and surprise attacks. In either case, you’ve gained enough confidence of having survived by your wits. In this workshop, Jon and Dan (and fellow workshop participant volunteers), will bring to life a framework for engaging in performance testing, with this simple structure:

Mission: goal, objectives, team, SUT, test scenarios (Assessing the situation, forming your squadron, mapping the battlefield, creating a battle plan)
Tactics: developing test assets, configuring system monitors, executing tests (gathering / creating your battle assets, setting up a perimeter, engaging the enemy)
Story: Through energetic, time-boxed story-telling and mini-LAWST-style facilitation, you’ll participate in a series of 6 to 10 real-life performance testing battles in varied contexts: software used filter and tag email; crowd-source testing social networking / gaming apps; diagnosing latency of a mobile phone download ringtone provide; testing the scalability enterprise IT systems; and using tools ranging from commercial to open source. Come prepared not just to learn but engage actively. Bring your own story to tell and we’ll guide you in telling it powerfully.

Guarantee you will all walk away with new bits of practical knowledge – and important story telling skills – you can apply on your next project


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Session Speakers:

Jon BachJon Bach – Manager for Corporate Intellect, Quardev, Inc.
Jon Bach is the Manager for Corporate Intellect for Quardev Laboratories – an outsource (onshore) test lab in Seattle, Washington. He’s one of those people you see at a local restaurant in the hotel bar after a conference, his notebook open, talking to colleagues about testing and engaging in problem-solving exercises with dice and playing cards. A 15-year veteran of software projects, Jon has worked as a test contractor, full-time test manager, and consultant for companies such as Microsoft, Rational, LexisNexis, and Hewlett-Packard. He has written articles for Computer magazine and Better Software (formerly STQE Magazine). Jon and his brother James invented “Session-Based Test Management” – a technique for managing (and measuring) exploratory testing. He is speaker chairman for Quardev’s Quality Assurance SIG, and 2011 Conference President for the Association for Software Testing.


Dan DowningDan Downing – Principal Consultant, Mentora Group
Dan Downing is a co-founder and Principal Consultant at Mentora Group, Inc., a testing and managed hosting company. Dan is the author of the 5-Steps of Load Testing, which he taught at Mercury Education Centers, and of numerous presentations, white papers and articles on performance testing. He teaches load testing and over the past 13 years has led hundreds of performance projects on applications ranging from eCommerce to ERP and companies ranging from startups to global enterprises. He is a regular presenter at STAR, HP Software Universe, Software Test and Performance, and Workshop on Performance and Reliability (WOPR) conferences.