How performance testing creates business value

The original intention of writing this article comes from the circle of friends CC The dynamics of the ：“ This year, many students who wrote test tool platforms did not achieve business value , Fall into the free market ”. In the comment area, we talked about how performance testing can achieve business value .

Of course ,CC This dynamic feeling comes from a few days ago infoQ An article from :《

A lot today  CTO  They were all killed , Because he did not achieve business

》. The opening words of this article are as follows ：

I can say without joke , today , R & D in many traditional enterprises is just “ Worker ”, Even if it is  CTO, At best, it's just “ Senior worker ”, If you don't change your mind to achieve business , You can only stay at the worker level “ Piece work system ” competition , Sooner or later be cut .

The following is from me and CC Communication content of , I have done systematic collation and viewpoint extension , For your reference only .

How to view the relationship between technology and business

Technical students should be familiar with this , Interview or peer communication , They all say that they need to understand technology and business , Or based on what business scenario , What technical solutions have been adopted , What problems have been solved . So in my opinion, the relationship between technology and business is quite simple , It's just mutual achievements . I understand the relationship between technology and business , In a word, it is ：

Technology is a tool that provides support and efficiency for achieving business goals , Better achievement of business goals requires higher technology

.

Business objectives ： Operational business growth

Common business scenarios , Several characteristics ：

• Business visibility

• Business visibility , A simple understanding is the state of the business , At what stage , The current effect can be presented intuitively in a visual state , A common scenario is business monitoring the market （ Think about what technology is needed to monitor the market ？ Data collection / data storage / Data presentation ）

• Business can be managed

• The most common is the configuration of some promotional activities , Such as activity time 、 The goods involved / Coupon 、 User type and label system （ What technology is needed here ？ Event venue construction tools / Preferential information cache / Activity message push ）

• Business is controllable

• Business controllability can also be understood literally , namely ： Operation monitoring of each business dimension / Business configuration release rollback and asset loss prevention ;

• Excellent business

• This point , We now have the most common e-commerce thousands of people and thousands of faces , Intelligent recommendation of short videos 、 Preferential marketing system for different levels of members ;

How does technology support business operation growth

As can be seen from the above figure , Common business operation processes , Every stage and link poses a challenge to the technical department ：

• From requirements to release

• R & D cost 、 R & D Efficiency 、 Delivery quality ;

• From order to order fulfillment

• Improve the business transaction and performance rate （ married deal / Order matching / Retention and transformation ）;

• Marketing and promotion of business activities

• Activity construction 、 Luck draw & Coupon & Quick response to marketing SMS and other aspects ;

• Fast discovery and solution of online faults

• Monitoring alarm 、 Problem location 、 risk assessment 、 Online services SLA;

How to understand that technology creates business value

The goal of Technology ： Support business operation

The characteristics of the business itself mainly include the following ：

• Refined operation （ Need accurate data ）;

• Cost and efficiency （ Lower costs and higher benefits ）;

• Better service for users （ We need to quickly and efficiently solve users' pain points ）;

• New businesses can be quickly verified （ Need efficient technical response and technical support ）;

The characteristics of the above businesses , Have put forward a lot of requirements for Technology ！

Technical support business operation growth cases

The above describes the characteristics of so many businesses and the importance of technology to business operation support , These contents can be summarized in the following figure ：

How performance testing creates business value

The above content comes from my previous article 《

What is the value of full link voltage measurement

》.

Based on me and CC The content of communication , Next, let's talk about how performance testing can create business value , I will elaborate my point of view through a few questions .

The original intention of performance testing

Think about a question first ： Where did our original intention or requirements for performance testing come from ？

It may be online user feedback APP Response is too slow , It may be reflected by the finance or cost department IT The cost of hardware is too high , It may also be that a business operation activity failed to achieve its business objectives due to the system's failure to handle it in a timely and correct manner （ ask ： double 11 What is the experience when the online system of zero hangs ）. These problems are classified , They are all pain points or demands from users and businesses ：

• APP Response is too slow ： Try to improve the processing speed ;

• The hardware cost is too high ： Find ways to reduce hardware costs ;

• Business objectives are not achieved ： Find ways to improve system stability ;

Why do performance tests ？

In terms of several key indicators of performance test , In the performance test, we are most concerned about TPS/RT/ Resource utilization .

TPS That is, the number of transactions per second , Indicates the processing capacity of a service unit in a given configuration .

RT There is also an average RT/99RT etc. , It measures the time taken by the system to process a single request from different dimensions .

Resource utilization refers to the resources consumed by the service running on a server when processing requests .

Of course, there is also the index of request success rate , This index is mainly used to measure the success rate of the system in processing requests and the fault tolerance of abnormal requests .

From the performance test behavior , The goal of performance test is to improve the processing capacity of the system as much as possible & Abnormal fault tolerance / Reduce request time , Pursue the lowest resource consumption .

What value does performance testing create

Then continue to talk about the above , Users have feedback , There are financial demands , Business has encountered pain points , What do I do ？ Find a way to solve the problem ！

User feedback is slow , Then constantly optimize and verify through performance testing , Improve the processing capacity per unit time , Reduce processing time , Enhance user experience .

The cost of financial feedback is high , Then improve the resource utilization efficiency of the server under the given configuration , Process more requests with fewer resources , Reduce hardware costs .

Business has encountered pain points （ Technology leads to the failure to achieve business goals ）, Just try to use technical means to solve the pain points of business .

So in summary “ cost reduction / Enhance user experience / Ensure the achievement of business objectives ”, This is the so-called business value ！

Performance testing is the premise of creating value

I mentioned earlier that

Technology is a tool that provides support and efficiency for achieving business goals

, Performance testing can directly or indirectly create business value , But it doesn't mean that having tools can create positive value .

Just like me and CC Exchange dialogue ：

CCTester

  reply  

Lao zhang

： I think performance testing is still achieving business value as long as it is done .

Lao zhang

  reply  

CCTester

： This needs to meet several conditions ： Enterprises have a demand , There is resource input , There is leadership support that sees this value , There are continuous iterative process specifications and technical system construction . Otherwise, the performance test is still low-end run Tool level .

In fact, it is very simple for technology to create business value , Just follow these points ：

• Find business pain points ;

• Find the right solution ;

• Solve business pain points better with lower cost and higher efficiency ;