White Papers

Cloud Testing Bill of Rights

Top 10 Decision Criteria for a Web and Mobile Application Testing Platform
This white paper, authored by software system performance and software testing systems thought leader Scott Barber, addresses your rights to organize and champion change within your IT or development group. Barber’s observations encourage people to see the Cloud Testing Bill of Rights as a series of revisions to commonly accepted software development practices and encourages citizens of the nation of software development to use the freedom of expanded options and pursue betterment of their current situation.

8 Common Myths About Performance Testing in Production

In today’s web environment, performance matters – a lot. And one of the best ways to ensure that your application will perform as expected, under production loads, is to do production performance testing. Testing your application in the production environment uncovers performance issues at scale that simply don’t exist in more limited lab tests. Despite its clear advantages, a surprising number of companies fail to performance test their applications this way. This is due, in part, to misconceptions or myths about production testing that keep companies from even exploring the possibilities. This paper aims to dispel those myths and give you a better idea of what is possible with today’s performance testing capabilities.

Stop Cheating White Paper

Performance testing is often as much an art as a science. Traditionally, performance testing operates within such significant constraints that testers rely on incomplete data collected in isolated test labs, sophisticated mathematical models, past experience and gut instinct to make their predictions. This remains true even when using automated testing tools.

The reality is that most production websites today go live without adequate performance testing. It’s true even of big name sites that can afford the test beds and tools. Automated performance testing is underutilized, and the lack of adequate testing leads to slow-­downs and failures that are costly for online businesses. In many cases, thorough performance testing at scale is seen as too difficult and expensive. Even in organizations with performance testing practices, many long-­ standing strategies are based on constraints and limitations that are no longer valid. In this paper we’ll look at some of the testing strategies designed to work around constraints or limitations in testing technologies, and how they compromise the effectiveness of performance testing.

Strategies for Seasonal Readiness

Seasonal traffic doesn’t just mean holiday traffic. For some companies, the start of the academic semester or summer holidays might trigger a traffic spike. For some, it may be a monthly or daily deal. Because you know when your seasonal peaks happen, you can plan for them. However, being prepared for seasonal traffic is not as easy as it might seem for the reasons outlined in this white paper.

Five Strategies for Performance Testing Mobile Applications

Mobile technology is simply ramping up faster than other technologies have in the past – it may well be the fastest technology adoption curve in history. And this has important implications for your business model. You’ve got to be fast to market, but also prepared for rapid adoption. If your application performs poorly, or fails under load, multiple competitors are ready to take your place – the barriers to entry are low.

Cloud Testing Production Applications

Performance testing for Web and mobile applications is critical, yet the “dirty little secret” in the Web world is that applications are rarely performance tested. Testing in production is a required component of any performance methodology that aims to achieve the highest confidence possible. This white paper discusses the three most frequently discussed topics about testing in production and describes how a testing methodology that addresses the challenges that arise in production environments helps to achieve a high confidence testing outcome.