April 10, 2023

By: Namrata Sharma and Arun Kumar Dutta

Isn’t it amazing that computers and gadgets are conversing more than people today? But the increasing number of such smart devices will add to the complexity, and they will likely be affected by slower response times, inconsistent user experiences, and overall poor operating conditions. So, appropriate and strong testing measures are required to evaluate these devices’ speed, scalability, and stability, which leads us to performance testing and engineering.

Performance testing and engineering help validate the speed/responsiveness of various applications and their scalability. It helps to determine the required infrastructure capacity to meet the processing needs for handling huge workloads. Assessing whether the application’s stability can be maintained for a longer period under various loads also aids in establishing the application’s availability.

Conducting performance testing and engineering can be challenging for an IoT application ecosystem of millions of connected devices. Finding a slight inaccuracy becomes far more difficult. A glitch in the vast network of interconnected devices can potentially disrupt the entire ecosystem. Additionally, these devices have various operating systems, brands, built-in capabilities, and data capacities. So, under these conditions, planning a series of load tests puts additional weight and new obstacles on quality assurance teams and IT employees that have just started their careers or want to thrive in this field. So, to validate the application for its performance, it is essential to conduct performance testing and engineering, keeping in mind the complexity involved in the IoT application ecosystem. Nevertheless, it helps an organization evaluate the current performance of its applications.

Recently, a significant shift has been witnessed in performance testing career opportunities for testers and engineers.

Additionally, many organizations and respected academia provide performance testing and engineering certification programs.

What are the prerequisites for entering the field of performance testing and engineering?

As per a Gartner Report, almost 6.2 billion smart devices were in use in 2021. To power these devices with useful software and ensure their performance is validated will demand the competence of performance testers and engineers with the necessary skill sets. Therefore, if you are considering becoming a performance engineer but are unsure of what technical skills you should develop, the following are some of the technical skill sets which are prerequisites for entering the field:

• Knowledge of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC): You must thoroughly understand the SDLC and STLC phases if you want to build a career in software testing and, consecutively, performance testing and engineering field. It will help you fully comprehend the software testing procedure and establish the groundwork for your performance testing career. Moreover, you should also be well-versed with the Performance Testing Life Cycle (PTLC), which is the phase-wise process for performing software system or application non-functional testing. PTLC is designed to set up a procedure for performance testing in the software streams with certain deliverables at each phase which also benefits the customer.
• Understanding of databases and SQL queries: To become a skilled performance tester, you must possess a robust understanding of databases such as Oracle, MySQL, among others. Additionally, you must familiarize yourself with SQL queries to interact with and study databases.
• Understanding Linux and other OS fundamentals: Performance testers must have a working knowledge of operating systems (OS). As a performance tester, you must set up the test environment and run the test cases. Therefore, knowing OS tools and commands makes this process simpler and more effective for you to do.
• Fundamentals of programming languages: When a project is being developed, a performance tester is needed to evaluate codes or programs for flaws or errors and analyze technical documentation. Performance testing is automation and multi-user-driven. So, basic scripting knowledge will be very helpful. Overall, you must possess a foundational understanding of numerous programming languages to work in the software testing industry, including Java, JavaScript, C, and Python.
• Networking and basic protocols: Performance testing, in general, works on server-side communications. So having protocol or communication mechanism knowledge in addition to 2-tier and 3-tier server architectural understanding will be very helpful to start your journey as performance testers and engineers.

Skills one should acquire at distinct phases of career

Through the below-designed skill radar, we have tried to underline skills pertaining to performance testing and engineering, which new joiners should acquire as they move along different phases of their career. Here, skills pertaining to performance testing jobs have been showcased through four segments that complement the career path in the field of performance testing and engineering.

The skills radar showcases what a new joiner should develop in PTE as per their career phase. It is developed using four segments.

Methodologies, Frameworks

• Newcomers should develop a solid base in SDLC, Agile, Scrum, and DevOps methodologies.
• Then they can move to advanced frameworks such as DevSecOps through which security safeguards are baked into software solutions and scaled Agile.
• Post that, they can look at design thinking, which helps to understand more about the application users and their usage.

Technical

• Newcomers should have good knowledge of scripting languages (Java, Python, C, JavaScript, etc.)
• Understanding of 2-tier, 3-tier, REST APIs, microservices, databases, and cloud computing architecture is a must.
• Next, when they move to the next phases of their performance testing career (due to an explosion of digital transformation initiatives), understanding cloud-native platforms, modern compute technologies such as serverless and containers, container orchestration, and different application technologies is the key.
• After that, they should look at understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) and predictive analytics as it helps with the self-healing capabilities of an application.

Processes

• At the beginning of their career, they should develop a solid understanding of processes, such as performance testing basics, along with basic scripting, automation and performance monitoring knowledge.
• After dabbling with these, they should develop skills in processes such as observability and Continuous Integration (CI)/Continuous Development (CD) pipeline performance testing, along with the basics of performance engineering.
• With applications now having complex distributed architectures, it is imperative to understand processes such as chaos engineering, resilience engineering, and site reliability engineering.
• At this stage, they should be abreast with changing business dynamics.

Tools

• New joiners should be well-versed with industry-standard performance testing tools such as JMeter, LoadRunner, and NeoLoad.
• Knowledge of using observability and monitoring tools like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic, etc., and incident management tools like JIRA.
• Once they have built this foundation, they can move to more advanced CI/CD and log analytics tools such as Jenkins and Splunk.
• Then they can move to advanced processes such as container orchestration and chaos engineering and learn tools for those, such as Gremlin, Litmus, for chaos engineering, and Kubernetes for orchestration.

Do you know different performance and engineering testing tools?

For career aspirants in performance testing and engineering, the following are some key tools they should use as they start their career as performance testing and engineering personnel.

The tools mentioned below are also employed in some of the major applications of performance testing and engineering.

• NeoLoad: NeoLoad is a great option for intelligent device cases and mobile load testing. Few companies can construct tests accurately and quickly in terms of network circumstances, individual hardware, and geographic location. Any direct recording from any device or emulator may be captured using a native or third-party smartphone app.
• LoadRunner: LoadRunner offers support for several programs. It considerably reduces the time and expertise required to simulate user transactions in apps for load testing. It supports test scripts and enables continuous integration testing with various Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). LoadRunner’s slick, integrated real-time monitor performance also enables us to identify performance bottlenecks.
• JMeter: Apache JMeter is a popular tool for gauging productivity. It is a free tool that may be used to assess and test findings for static and dynamic qualities and gauge how well various loads operate. Moreover, JMeter is also used as a specialized tool for performance testing in IoT cloud applications, wherein its plugged in to capture communications over different protocols.
• LOCUST: LOCUST is an open-source load-testing tool that supports Python programming. With the help of Locust, load testing may be distributed across several machines and can mimic millions of devices and users. It is a tried-and-true substitute that is made incredibly accessible by Python.

Below mentioned are some of the tools used for IoT where client-server-based systems are being setup:

• MATLAB: Applications supporting the MATLAB idea and prototype include predictive management, process optimization, supervisory control, and many more.
• IoTIFY: IoTIFY strategies make simulators available as a service to IoT developers to enhance their manufacturing and research procedures. The platform aids in locating a virtual computer, choosing the connection terminal, and processing and scanning the simulation as necessary.
• BevyWise Simulator: Anyone can examine the load and features of any local and cloud MQTT programs using BevyWise’s simulator. A standard computer can simulate tens of thousands of people. Servers and MQTT devices may be developed and tested among other device types.
• IBM Watson IoT Platform (IBM Bluemix): One of the prominent IoT testing tools that provide a workaround for several IBM cloud providers is the IBM Watson IoT platform. By performance testing IoT platforms, anyone can assemble and evaluate associated product outputs and data usage for IoT-enabled assets. It is also feasible to add platform extensions like blockchain or platform analytics.

Conclusion

Software performance testers and engineers will always be in demand if computers rule our planet.

Within a few years, you may establish yourself in this industry if you undertake the greatest software performance engineering courses.

Since businesses cannot deploy their product without adequate testing, demand for performance testing professionals will never decrease. Additionally, these businesses will need stronger testing initiatives and strategies as technology develops. An effective and knowledgeable performance engineer will help you drive those strategies.

We think there would be a significant rise in performance testing jobs.

If we only talk about the IoT market, it’s anticipated to reach almost USD 650 billion by 2026, thereby boosting the demand for young professionals possessing skill sets pertaining to performance testing and engineering. As one of the prominent applications of performance testing and engineering, IoT is penetrating many dimensions of our lives, and performance testing and engineering are essential to its consumption by thousands of end users.

By acquiring software performance engineering skills, a beginner can also support continuous improvement of the software in terms of different performance and resilience quality attributes.