13 January 2023
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8 June 2023
13 Minutes Read 
BY
Sidath Asiri
This article “Performance Testing in Agile Times” explores the integration of performance testing into Agile development. We cover basic Agile principles, challenges for system performance, and best practices for incorporating performance testing. We discuss performance plans, selecting testing tools, continuous performance testing, and how to analyze performance results. Collaboration with development and operations teams, prioritizing performance defects, and scaling performance testing in Agile are also addressed. We highlight common pitfalls and emphasize the importance of seamless integration for delivering high-performing software applications in an Agile environment.
Understanding Basic Agile Principles and Practices
Challenges for System Performance in Agile
This is an approach to software testing that aligns with the principles of Agile development methodologies. Agile development is an iterative and collaborative approach to software development that emphasizes flexibility, adaptability, and customer collaboration. Agile methodologies prioritize delivering working software in minor increments, combining feedback from stakeholders, and permitting teams to respond immediately to varying requirements throughout the development process.
It responds to the traditional, rigid waterfall development model, often leading to delays, scope creep, and limited customer involvement. Agile methodologies prioritize the ability to respond to change and deliver incremental value in short, frequent iterations called sprints. The focus is on delivering working software quickly and regularly, allowing continuous feedback and improvement throughout development.
It is vital to note that we view testing as an integral part of the development process, rather than as a separate phase. We perform testing continuously throughout the project. Agile testing strongly emphasizes communication and collaboration between the development and testing teams. Testers work closely with developers, product owners, and stakeholders to understand user requirements, create test cases, and provide valuable feedback. The goal is to ensure the software meets customer expectations and delivers business value.
Due to the nature and characteristics of agile, it introduces specific challenges that teams need to address in addition to the everyday challenges they encounter in performance testing.
Initiating performance testing early in the development cycle is essential to avoid last-minute performance issues. Begin by identifying critical performance requirements and defining performance testing objectives. This will help to plan and allocate sufficient time and resources for performance testing activities throughout the project.
User stories are used in Agile to define user requirements and add them as new features to the system. Most teams usually only consider the actual business requirements to state in the acceptance criteria without considering non-functional requirements like performance. But the team can incorporate the performance requirements into user stories in the first place. In that manner, teams can mitigate most of the issues that occur later because performance is considered while designing the feature.
Defining a realistic performance testing plan simulating real-world user behavior is crucial to ensure accurate performance testing. A performance testing plan outlines the strategy and approach for conducting performance testing to assess the performance and scalability of a software application. It serves as a roadmap for performance testing activities and helps to meet performance objectives. Below are some pointers that teams can consider when creating a performance plan.
Choosing the right performance testing tool is crucial for successful performance testing in Agile projects. The tool should align with project requirements, support Agile methodologies, and provide the necessary features to conduct performance tests effectively. Features such as script recording and playback, load generation, reporting and analysis capabilities, support for different protocols and technologies, and integration with Agile tools and frameworks will be beneficial when used frequently.
The team can have a continuous performance testing strategy by automating performance tests and incorporating them into the CI/CD pipeline. It involves seamlessly integrating performance testing activities into the Agile CI/CD pipeline, allowing teams to monitor and assess system performance throughout the development lifecycle continuously. Further, this enables teams to identify performance issues early on. This integration ensures that performance considerations are given the same level of priority as functional requirements, fostering a proactive approach to maintaining system performance.
It is important to highlight that these automated performance test scripts should be developed to simulate realistic user behavior, handle various user loads, and execute performance tests consistently. These scripts should be designed to be reusable, maintainable, and easily integrated into the CI/CD pipeline, enabling efficient execution of performance tests as part of each build or deployment cycle.
Another critical aspect of continuous performance testing is setting up appropriate performance test environments to ensure adequate performance testing. These environments should be designed to replicate the production environment as closely as possible. However, this might cost significantly in terms of pricing since production environments usually have heavy infrastructure, and performance tests are only executed occasionally. So most of the time, it is an idle environment. In addition to that, replicating that kind of infrastructure manually is very time-consuming.
This can be handled at some level if it is possible to use cloud environments. Teams can use infrastructure as code (IaC) technique to create the necessary infrastructure automatically before starting the tests and delete it after completing the tests. This will eliminate the manual effort to create infrastructure and reduce costs since the environment is only created per usage.
After running performance tests, exporting the test reports to a platform like Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, Splunk, etc., is vital. It enhances the visibility of performance testing, and every stakeholder can look at the system’s performance. At the same time, when this has continued for a long time, the team can visualize how the system’s performance has varied over time. If there are any performance degradations in the system, this helps teams to determine at what point these were introduced and what features or code changes have induced them.
Performance Test Execution Analysis is a crucial step in the Agile development process that involves examining the results of performance tests to gain insights into the system’s performance characteristics. This analysis helps to identify performance bottlenecks, validate requirements, and inform decision-making for optimization and improvement efforts.
In Agile projects, various stakeholders, including performance testers, developers, and product owners, perform iterative and collaborative performance test execution analysis. The analysis focuses on understanding the performance metrics and identifying areas of concern or improvement that may impact the overall user experience.
During the analysis process, carefully examine performance test results and evaluate metrics such as response times, throughput, error rates, and resource utilization. Then compare these metrics against performance goals, baselines, and thresholds established earlier in the project. Identify and investigate any deviations or anomalies to understand their underlying causes. The insights gained from performance test execution analysis should be fed into the Agile feedback loop, driving continuous improvement. Additionally, communicate the analysis results to relevant stakeholders through clear and concise performance analysis reports, which is a key characteristic of Agile.
Effective collaboration between the development and operations teams is essential for successful performance testing in Agile projects. By working together closely, these teams can ensure that performance testing activities align with development objectives and operational requirements, ultimately delivering high-performing software applications.
Development and operations teams must establish a shared understanding of performance goals and expectations, defining performance requirements such as response time, throughput, scalability, and resource utilization. At the same time, teams should actively participate in performance test planning to identify critical use cases, define realistic performance scenarios, and determine the appropriate test environment and data. During performance test execution, development and operations teams should collaborate closely to monitor and analyze test results. This includes jointly reviewing performance metrics, identifying performance bottlenecks, and conducting root-cause analysis.
Agile is all about following an iterative development process to improve the product. Here, improving is about more than just adding more features but also making it perform well. Therefore, while adding extra features, it is crucial to prioritize the identified performance issues and fix them as soon as possible.
In agile development, limited time may be available for fixing performance issues. Therefore, it’s crucial to prioritize performance defects based on their impact and severity. The agile team requires collaboration to evaluate the business impact of each performance issue and prioritize them accordingly. This ensures critical performance defects are addressed promptly, while minor problems can be tackled in subsequent iterations.
In agile methodology, we start small and incrementally add features to it. That means all the time, there will be a working product with an increasing number of features. When the product gets rich with features, its user base increases, bringing more traffic to the system over time. Therefore, it is crucial to observe this behavior in production and update the relevant configurations, like concurrent users, in the performance tests to keep them closer to the actual performance requirement. Otherwise, the performance tests will pass, but eventually, performance issues will arise in the production environment.
During the sprint, it is crucial to identify and fix performance script issues promptly. Performance scripts are the foundation of performance testing and play a vital role in simulating realistic user behavior and load scenarios. In an Agile environment, it is common to have a continuous feedback loop between development and testing. Therefore, if performance script issues are identified during the sprint, they should ideally be addressed and fixed within the same sprint. This allows for quicker feedback and minimizes the risk of carrying unresolved performance issues into subsequent sprints.
However, suppose the performance script issues are complex or require significant changes that cannot be accommodated within the sprint timeframe. In that case, it may be necessary to defer the fixes to the next sprint. In such situations, it is essential to document the identified issues thoroughly and communicate them to the development team for future resolution.
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In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, where user expectations for high-performing software are at an all-time high, incorporating performance testing into Agile processes is crucial and comes with its own challenges. In this blog post, we explored the basic principles and practices of Agile testing, the challenges faced when testing system performance in Agile, and the best practices to overcome them.
We emphasized the need to incorporate performance testing from the early stages of development and outlined the steps to define a performance testing plan. Selecting suitable performance testing tools and implementing continuous performance testing are vital to identify performance issues early on and ensure optimal software performance throughout the development lifecycle.
We also highlighted the importance of test results visibility and performance test execution analysis, which enable teams to identify bottlenecks and make informed decisions for improvement. Collaborating closely with development and operations teams fosters a culture of shared responsibility and accelerates the resolution of performance defects.
Scaling performance testing in Agile environments requires careful planning. Organizations can maintain high-quality software and deliver a seamless user experience by prioritizing performance defects and addressing them promptly.
In conclusion, integrating performance testing into Agile processes is essential in ensuring success to software applications in today’s demanding market. By following the best practices outlined in this blog post and remaining vigilant of the challenges and pitfalls, teams can optimize system performance, meet user expectations, and achieve business objectives effectively.
