Core Performance Testing Principle:

Overview

Continual information and data sharing is critical to the efficiency and overall success of a performance testing project. Not all of this information and data sharing needs to take the form of a formal or semi-formal report. One effective approach is to send stakeholders summary charts and tables every day or two in an email with a key point statement. Use the feedback and questions from those stakeholders to guide what goes into the next formal or semi-formal report. This way you can gauge the needs of your audience before writing what’s intended to be a stand-alone or final document.

Keys to Reporting

The key to effective reporting is to present information of interest in a manner that is quick, simple, and intuitive to the intended audience.  Below are some underlying principles to achieving effective reports.

• Report early, report often

• Report visually

• Report intuitively

• Use the right statistics

• Consolidate data correctly

• Summarize data effectively

• Customize for the intended audience

• Use concise verbal summaries using strong but factual language

• Make the data available

• Filter out any unnecessary data.

• If reporting intermediate results include the priorities, concerns and blockers for the next several test execution cycles.

Technical Reports

• Description of the test including workload model and test environment

• Easy to digest data with minimal pre-processing

• Access to the complete data set and test conditions

• Short statements of observations, concerns, questions, and requests for collaboration

Stakeholder Reports

• Criteria the results relate to

• Intuitive, visual representations of the most relevant data

• Brief verbal summaries of the chart or graph in terms of criteria

• Intuitive, visual representations of the workload model and test environment

• Access to associated Technical Reports, complete data sets and test conditions

• Summaries of observations, concerns and recommendations

Learn more through PerfTestPlus Training

This topic is covered in the following PTP training courses:

• Scott Barber´s Performance Testing Software Systems: A Heuristic Approach
• Scott Barber's Principles Of Performance Testing (Designed for Managers and Executives)
• Scott Barber´s Performance Testing Software Systems: An Introduction
• Scott Barber's Performance Testing Software Systems; Applied (Using client's tool of choice)
• Scott Barber's Performance Testing the Front-End
• Scott Barber's Analyzing Performance Test Data
• Scott Barber's Designing Performance Tests with UCML™

Content adapted from:

PerfTestPlus.com

Performance Testing

Software Testing