STAREAST 2013: Finding the Real Value in Load Testing

Organizations spend countless hours in load testing exercises with the intent of finding and fixing system bottlenecks to improve overall performance.  But how much time is spent in the process of preparing and executing the test versus finding and fixing real issues. Effective load testing requires both the process and tools to 1) impose a representative user load on the system and 2) track that load down to the root cause of the performance problems.  This process works best when testers can efficiently communicate their findings to developers in a way that makes sense to the developers and eliminates the war rooms and finger pointing that often accompany the process.