Load Test Best Practices

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to connect to an application or website only to be denied due to a higher traffic load.

If a company or team’s website is incapable of serving a high traffic at any given point, it can drive visitors away, making it highly important that each website and application perform Load Test before being made available to the public.

Developers need to be diligent when Load Testing, and must integrate up-to-date practices in order to best ensure the stability of the program or website when experiencing high traffic, as to guarantee a smooth experience for each person that wishes to visit the website or use the program.

Aim for Reasonably Accurate Results Early

In software development, big issues can become very expensive if not addressed as soon as they are found. In addition, a number of application-breaking issues may go unnoticed until a period of time into the life of a program, which can cost significant amounts of money to resolve.

It’s important for development teams to aim for reasonable accurate results as early as possible, as fixing problems in the long-run will be much more of a hassle than finding and fixing them right away.

Because of this, Load Test should be done multiple times, and no conclusions should be drawn until a verdict is secured after extensive testing. It’s far more cost efficient to take extra time early to resolve issues than it is to release a program with bugs only to be found later.

Nothing is worse than having an application or website crash under heavy loads when it’s needed the most, as this can be expensive for teams to fix and a big issue for would-be users. So you should know your Load Testing Tools.

Test a Broad Range of Scenarios

There are nearly limitless situations that can lead to a website experiencing overly highly loads, and there’s no way to test them all in a controlled environment.

However, teams can test across a wide range of scenarios in order to better understand which ones the website or program can handle, and which ones it cannot.

These Software Testing Tools can range from extremes on both sides of the load spectrum, from real world scenarios to out-of-the-box cases which may never happen. By testing across this wide spectrum of possible scenarios, the program or website will be far more reliable under expected loads, as these traffic loads will be have already been expected and dealt with long before the website’s release.

Use a Controlled Environment for Load Test

Load Test involves a number of practices that embody the traditional scientific method, and using a controlled environment for testing is one of them.

Why use a controlled environment? Just as in a science experiment, Software Testing must not leave room for unnecessary variables, particularly those which cannot be controlled.

By testing with dedicated servers and proper configuration management, only valid and reproducible results will be achieved, making them useful for making finalized conclusions about performance.

Testing without these resources leaves room for outside variables to ruin the results, making them unreliable and ultimately useless.

Load test is incredibly important for any website or program that is expected to see moderate to heavy traffic, and there are a number of practices that can make the process easier and more reliable than ever. By using the load testing practices about, any project can be done easily and effectively without creating biased or unreliable results.