What is your performance testing approach?

Identifying system requirements by a project team is one thing. The other one is achieving them once the system goes live. System performance should be hence measurable.

How to check if performance is acceptable?

Don’t push it

With Dynamics 365 F&O, pushing the system to the breaking point will not do.

The best approach to check if the system can handle the demand is to simulate the expected system usage by including peak loads and day-in-the-life volumes.

This way, you know precisely if your D365 is able to achieve the predefined performance goals.

?Be realistic

Know the quantity and personas of your users. If they are accurately defined, the projected demand will also be precise.

If you want to find out the users’ activity, you need to know who is using the system at a given time and understand the day-in-the-life activity profiles of those users.

Performance testing should be based on how users would test the system themselves with the access that they have.

This might be difficult with the custom security config in Dynamics 365 – that is why we have made it much easier (and cheaper) with the Security Setup tool.

?Use business data

A well-done performance testing derives from business data.

Whether it is setups, configs, or transactions that will go live in production – use it.

And make sure the data preparation activities are ready in import files.

Environment matter – also in performance testing

Dedicate an isolated environment to D365 F&O performance testing.

Why?

Firstly, without the testers being aware of the activities occurring in the system while testing, performance test results will not be reliable.

Secondly, it is quite common to run performance tests simultaneously with UATs. The former can disrupt manual testing activities – they not only take a heap of time but also push the system. Meaningful performance testing – if executed in a dedicated performance testing environment – can be run parallel to any testing whatsoever.

Planning performance tests

Whatever your performance testing strategy is, make sure you document it.

What should it include ideally?

Let’s sum up:

·??????Environment for performance testing

·??????Number and profile of concurrent users

·??????Performance testing scenarios

·??????Data preparation activities for each testing scenario

·??????Normal and peak data volumes for each testing scenario

·??????Performance testing iterations

·??????Guidelines and workflows for fixing performance issues

·??????Day-in-the-life workload to simulate real-life user activity

·??????Performance testing tool

·??????Test results documentation tool

·??????Performance testing risks (budget, delays, etc.).

System performance affects people in various ways.

If you want to know how to take better care of your D365 performance, watch this webinar.