What type of Performance test you need?

How we prioritize our performance test depends on of these three key areas:

• The end user experience ( that Application responds quickly enough for the intended users)
• The hardware performance (that Application is stable under expected and unexpected user loads)
• The software and how it scales (that Application handles the expected user load and beyond)

   Keep in mind that  It’s the Journey, Not the Destination, i.e. the performance test is not an event but a process.

Hence during early stages of development use smoke test consisting limited virtual users to determine whether an application does or does not work. Here you should validate response time of individual components.

During development stage determine how the application performs under normal or low load conditions. Are there places where performance should improve? Check for Bottlenecks.

Later stages of development is time to test under normal expected load. Check for errors and stability because now is the time to give feedback about tweaking performance parameters (hardware / refactoring) according to expected load.

At Pre-deployment phase make sure you pass all expected performance criteria for expected traffic levels, even for longer period of time. Here perform Soak test for memory leaks. Finally go for stress test for boundary level and recovery conditions.

Post deployment is not time to celebrate just yet, make sure to have all your scripts ready to assess scalability conditions as expected load may increase.