What is Performance Testing Risk Assessment?
Risk assessment is the first step in the life cycle of performance testing. Each software system component’s necessity for performance testing is determined by the risk assessment. Hence All the system’s interconnected components are given a risk score or matrix. This risk score aids in determining the component’s importance in terms of performance testing.
A performance tester can prioritize the testing scope and scenarios using risk assessment as a tool. This stage is used by certain performance testers to pinpoint crucial business flows. If such a crucial feature fails, it might have a significant negative effect on the business in terms of user satisfaction, business income, extended application outages, etc.
Purpose of Risk Assessment:
To determine the extent of performance testing in a project, a risk assessment is carried out. Understanding the effects of modifications on the current functionality is aided by risk assessment. Moreover, the effects of enhancing the current system with additional features. The components for performance testing that are within and outside of scope should be identified as well.
Accountability:
A Performance Test Manager or Lead who has a component-level understanding of the software system can conduct the risk assessment from a performance testing perspective.
Approach:
Performance Test Manager or Lead; either of them has to schedule a meeting with the project team. In the call, he should aim:
- To get detailed information on new functionality
- Impact of changes on existing functionality
- Discuss the change in the load/volume
- Discuss and agree on the impacted components which require performance testing.
The performance test manager or lead also determines the parameters of the test. Some of the components can be excluded from performance testing based on a risk assessment if an end-to-end test is not within scope. Certain criteria are used in the risk assessment to determine if performance testing is necessary for a certain component.
The performance testing scope is included in the risk assessment document that the performance test manager or lead creates at the conclusion of this phase. Before the end of the Risk Assessment Phase, this document needs to be approved by all project stakeholders.
How to proceed practically?
For a Performance Test Manager/Lead, the application is fresh in 80% of instances. If so, he should take the following actions to complete a successful risk assessment:
Understanding the application architecture is important if the application is new to the Performance Test Manager/Lead. To do this, he will need to schedule several calls and meetings with the project’s stakeholders, including the business partners, application architect, developer, QA team, etc. It’s a good idea to gather all the details regarding the system’s design and create some useful notes.
Refer to the Project Document: The HLD (high-level design document), LLD (low-level design document), AO (Architecture Overview document), and other software development papers are very helpful in understanding the design of the application.
Setting Up Meetings/Calls: In the absence of these papers, one-on-one or group meetings (calls) with all parties involved serve the necessary function.
Deliverable:
When the performance testing team joins the project, the Risk Assessment document begins to be drafted. The risk assessment should ideally be carried out during the project’s planning phase, but in practice, there are numerous obstacles to overcome, such as changes in the project’s scope during the initial or development phase, changes in strategy, etc., which can render the original risk assessment useless. Therefore, risk assessment is carried out either at the conclusion of the development cycle or at the beginning of functional testing. One thing to keep in mind is that, as was already said, risk assessment marks the start of the performance testing phase. As such, all actions linked to performance testing should begin immediately after risk assessment.
