Performance Testing Cheat Sheet

This Performance Testing Cheat Sheet will help you to quickly revise all the critical performance testing terms in a simple way:

Basic Performance Metrics:

Performance Test Type

  • Early Performance Test (EPT): To measure system performance during the initial (development) phase
  • Load Test: To measure all the performance metrics by applying peak user load
  • Stress Test: To measure the stability of the system by applying futuristic (anticipated) user load
  • Soak Test: To measure the sustainability of the system by applying average user load for a longer duration
  • Spike Test: To measure the system’s stability by applying full user (all users in the system) load for a shorter period at certain time intervals.
  • Step-up: To measure the system’s stability under a gradually increasing load condition.
  • Break-point Test: To find out the break-point of the system
  • Volume (Batch) Test: To measure the system performance under bulk data processing conditions.

Performance Testing Life Cycle:

  • Risk Assessment: To identify the scope and nature of the impact on the system’s components (what to test)
  • Non-Functional Requirement Gathering: To collect the performance matrices (what to measure)
  • Test Plan: To prepare the road-map of the performance test (how to test)
  • Test Scripting: To create the automated script using the performance testing tool
  • Workload Modelling: To simulate the real-world scenario using the performance test scripts
  • Test Execution: To run the performance tests and analyse the test result
  • Report: To articulate the findings, outcomes, Go No-Go decision and recommendations

Commonly used Performance Testing Tools:

Commonly used Monitoring Tools:

  • Grafana
  • Micro Focus SiteScope
  • PerfMon

Commonly used APM Tools:

  • Dynatrace
  • AppDynamics
  • New Relic
  • Manage Engine
  • Datadog

Common Bottlenecks:

  • Memory Leakage
  • Sizing of the connection pool
  • JVM misconfiguration
  • Java Thread Deadlock
  • Inappropriate Garbage Collection (GC)
  • Network Bandwidth issue
  • Insufficient RAM
  • I/O issue
  • Page Fault

What to monitor?

  • Web Server
  • Application Server
  • Database Server
  • Middleware
  • Network (optional)

Performance Testing Law/Rules:

Basic Terminologies:

  • Vuser: Virtual User / Thread
  • Transaction: User action on UI
  • Think Time: Delay between two transactions
  • Iteration: Complete (E2E) journey of Vuser OR Group of transactions.
  • Pacing: Delay between two iterations
  • Steady State: The time window in which system performance is measured OR when all the Vusers are active
  • Ramp-up: Gradually increase in Vuser count
  • Ramp-down: Gradually decrease in Vuser count
  • Scenario: Group of test scripts


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