Performance testing is evaluating system’s responsiveness and stability under a particular workload, it involves techniques to simulate the real-time load ranging from few thousands of transactions per day to millions of transactions per day with tools to automate & monitor/report the runtime statistics and this requires knowledge of complete system architecture. To cope up with the challenges brought in by always emerging technology transformations, even Performance Testing has evolved from being run once in a year or at the end of development cycle to almost weekly runs.

In traditional SDLC model, Performance Testing was done at the end of the product development wherein all the components were ready and functionally tested. But now, when the world is moving towards agile involving short sprints, fast deployments and less time to deliver, the legacy Performance Testing approach stands like a gorilla in the room. In order to meet the need for quick feedback on the Performance stats and to be in line with the sprint pace, Performance Testing needs to be done smartly and efficiently, as in it needs to be integrated with as much automation as possible.

But integrating Performance Testing with CI/CD could be a challenge for environment sizing. To detect issues early and to make Performance Testing process a part of agile, the trick is to implement a level-based approach, wherein the performance tests could be run on different components at various level of the technology stack (execution behaviour could be mocked) with adequate monitoring at each component. Once all components are tested and validated against the performance parameters, the complete system could be put under execution with real-time load simulation.