After getting through a couple weeks of my classes, and looking through blogs online about testing, I found the stickyminds blog. In my first week I was given setup tasks for CS-443 Software Quality Assurance and Testing, and one of those tasks was to discover blogs and podcasts related to the course content. I used this blog for my setup tasks, and found it a useful compendium of resources. While searching through stickyminds, I focused on the area around ‘new to testing’, and found a specific article about how to improve your skills as a performance tester quite interesting. The article’s title is How to Become a Better Performance Tester 101 by Jun Zhuang.

The blog begins with a small piece of advice based on segmenting code for testing. While some people might argue that you should test and optimize after large portions of the code are complete, this blog argues instead for doing performance testing while it is still incomplete. It is also advised to learn performance testing under someone who is very experienced in the topic, as many performance testers don’t understand or know which questions they should be asking. This is why shadowing is very important, as it allows a new performance tester to pick things up quicker, and gather an understanding of the tools used more effectively. Jun Zhuang discusses Agile software development teams that are commonly used in industry. He describes them as being used to handle performance testing responsibilities. These teams use strategies such as getting developers involved in capturing performance issues early, communication between teams and testers, and holding critical team meetings more frequently. They still face occasional struggles to meet deadlines when performance issues arise, but these teams are overall described as efficient and useful. The latter half of the blog explains the importance of performance testing, and why you should put this effort into doing it. By exploring these components like applications, or databases testers can better design tests and diagnose issues. The blog also shares some personal accounts of testers utilizing their knowledge in programming to speed up testing processes, by writing stubs and generating test data. It stresses the importance that individuals with diverse technological backgrounds, even if less experienced in performance testing, can bring valuable insights and problem-solving skills to the role.

I chose this blog because I am very interested in improving my skills at all times. When I discovered the Stickyminds blog, I was excited by the amount of information it presented. This blog on performance testing I discovered in the new to testing section, which has a lot of very useful articles to help you improve your skills. Even small pieces of advice and tactics can make the difference when it comes to coding and testing especially. A personal weakness with testing in my own projects I had, was that I was worried my code was not optimized enough, and what I learned through this blog is something I will apply to improving optimization, especially seeking out someone experienced to work with and improve my skills. 

Source:

https://www.stickyminds.com/article/how-become-better-performance-tester-101

From the blog CS@Worcester – WSU CS Blog: Ben Gelineau by Ben Gelineau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.