Agile Performance Testing Again
Submitted by Alexander Podelko on Fri, 24/07/2009 - 03:38.
development methodology | non-functional testing | performance testing
Two Views of Agile Unit Testing reminded me (indirectly) the QAForums Agile Performance Testing - Oxymoron? discussion about agile development and performance testing some time ago
Well, if we talk about agile development I don't see any problem with performance testing at all: you have a working build each iteration – you test it. What is a problem? It should be synonym, not oxymoron.
All issues mentioned in the discussion boil down to one: nobody wants to pay for it (so no testers, no equipment, etc). Don't see anything especially agile in it. Maybe companies still don't switch to agile development for major projects - and don't want to spend money for minor projects. Another explanation may be that in most traditional projects performance testing happens at the very end instead of every iteration (so require less resources) - but it not the way to do it properly.
I see significantly more problems doing performance testing properly during traditional development. I wrote a paper that has the same title, Agile Performance Testing, but completely different content: how to do performance testing in an agile way for any kind of projects (where agile projects look rather like a trivial case for me).
Well, returning to the original question of the discussion, there are a few articles in the Internet about the subject:
Agile Performance Testing by Jamie Dobson
An Explanation of Performance Testing on an Agile Team Part 1 and Part2 by Scott Barber
Chapter 6 of Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. Managing an Agile Performance Test Cycle.
Well, if we talk about agile development I don't see any problem with performance testing at all: you have a working build each iteration – you test it. What is a problem? It should be synonym, not oxymoron.
All issues mentioned in the discussion boil down to one: nobody wants to pay for it (so no testers, no equipment, etc). Don't see anything especially agile in it. Maybe companies still don't switch to agile development for major projects - and don't want to spend money for minor projects. Another explanation may be that in most traditional projects performance testing happens at the very end instead of every iteration (so require less resources) - but it not the way to do it properly.
I see significantly more problems doing performance testing properly during traditional development. I wrote a paper that has the same title, Agile Performance Testing, but completely different content: how to do performance testing in an agile way for any kind of projects (where agile projects look rather like a trivial case for me).
Well, returning to the original question of the discussion, there are a few articles in the Internet about the subject:
Agile Performance Testing by Jamie Dobson
An Explanation of Performance Testing on an Agile Team Part 1 and Part2 by Scott Barber
Chapter 6 of Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. Managing an Agile Performance Test Cycle.