Want to know what a bucket of bottlenecks is? You’ll find out today as we talk with PerfBytes’ Mark Tomlinson. Not performance testing your application can be dangerous. Don't be left singing the performance testing blues after being featured on the PerfBytes’ News of the Damned.
In this episode the Performance Sherpa, Mark Tomlinson who has over 20 years of testing experience, helps guide those new to performance testing over the rough terrain of getting started with their performance efforts — no matter how daunting the task may seem. So get ready to bring your performance testing efforts to a whole new level!
About Mark Tomlinson
Mark Tomlinson is a performance engineering and software testing consultant. His career began in 1992 with a comprehensive two-year test for a life-critical transportation system, a project which captured his interest for software testing, quality assurance, and test automation. That first test project sought to prevent trains from running into each other — and Mark has metaphorically been preventing “train wrecks” for his customers for the past 20 years. He has broad experience with real-world scenario testing of large and complex systems and is regarded as a leading expert in software testing automation with a specific emphasis on performance.
For the majority of Mark’s career he has worked for companies as a testing practitioner and consultant using the leading products for performance testing, profiling and measurement. He has also consistently established close ties and relationships with the major vendors who create these tools.
Mark worked for six years at Microsoft Corporation as a performance consultant and engineer in the Microsoft Services Labs, in the Enterprise Engineering Center and in the SQL Server labs. His efforts to foster the success of Microsoft’s top-tier Enterprise customers was focused on their early adoption of Microsoft products as part of mission-critical operations. In 2008, as the LoadRunner Product Manager at HP Software Mark led the team to deliver leading innovations for performance testing and engineering as part of HP's suite of performance validation and management products.
Mark now offers coaching, training and consulting to help customers adopt modern performance testing and engineering strategies, practices and behaviors for better performing technology systems. He is the co-founder and host of the popular podcast PerfBytes.
Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk
- Performance Testing is a team effort
- When engineers are doing spring planning around what the story should be to never talk about any physical properties. Just talk about time and volume.
- What if happens is a wonderful contemplative question because it starts from the point of exploration
- There is nothing eviler then a crashing website
- How to determine what a realistic response time is for your application's functionality
- Make sure you collaborate with the different sprint teams on the common performance bottlenecks that you find
- Production has become more fluid and open so the ability to virtualize something in production is now possible.
- There are other kinds of bottlenecks that are not specific to scale that you can still find using more of a trending over time model
- Don't lose sight of the end user's experience
- Much, much more!
Resources
- Every Computer Performance Book: How to Avoid and Solve Performance Problems on The Computers You Work With
Bob Wescott - Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Microsoft Corporation - Speak Easy is a voluntary program designed to increase diversity in tech conferences through dedicated conference spots, mentoring and events. @spkeazee
- PerfBytes is a MUST listen to the podcast hosted by Mark Tomlinson and James Pulley that covers all things performance testing related
Connect with Mark
- Twitter: @mtomlins
- Blog: http://mtomlins.blogspot.com/
- Podcast: www.perfbytes.com
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