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Has the Need for Performance Testing Been Assessed?

Type: DeepDive
Category: Test
Audience: QA engineers, performance architects, and reviewers of high-traffic or complex systems

🔍 What This Perspective Covers

Performance is not a trait.
It’s a commitment—and must be proven.

⚠️ Common Omissions

  • No test plan for API under load, despite expected concurrency
  • “Performance” assumed because staging was fast
  • DB load patterns not simulated (e.g. long tail, batch updates)
  • No thresholds defined: what is “slow”? what is “acceptable”?

✅ Healthier Performance Design

  • Decide: is perf testing needed? when? what endpoints or flows?
  • Define load shape: bursty? spiky? sustained?
  • Prepare test data to mimic real-world skew
  • Measure tail latency and failure rates—not just averages
  • Include perf test outcomes in release Go/No-Go

🧠 Key Principle

Latency isn’t a number.
It’s a contractual boundary that must be honored under pressure.

❓ FAQ

  • Q: Isn’t CI/CD enough to detect slowness?
    A: No. Load must be synthetic, controlled, and scenario-aware.

  • Q: What if we can’t test full scale?
    A: Test bottlenecks under partial load with extrapolation.