Hope this will give you more clarity and maturity to widen up your performance testing skills. Before we certify any application performance, have to follow: Satisfied with your own performance or not? Conducting effective performance test or not? Have we ever thought how to ensure your performance test strategy performance test report is bug free? we have to get hold of comfortable in the terminologies used in the performance engineering field . And specifically we need to learn one or two popular and effective performance test tools and develop bottleneck analysis skills. These are the basic skills required for being a performance tester. Then you are matured enough to do performance test and look for how effective. When we talk about effectiveness we need to start looking at Analytical modeling and simulation modeling approaches to move to your next level of expertise. Another important tips is that, understand the operational laws and start applying those laws in your day to day test activities. Slowly we have to start learning about Workload Modeling concepts and Statistical distribution fitting and apply those learning’s to define performance testing goals/SLAs. And also we have to concentrate more on Demand planning and Performance prediction techniques. Learn Mean value analysis and Erlang’s method. Lastly we have to learn about Capacity Planning. Happy reading! Work towards those tips and post your experience back to us.

Performance Analysis is the monitoring of existing system resource usage to respond to unusual in resource usage or failures. The scope of the analysis is typically a server or individual component at a time, and is a short term, technically oriented activity. This function supports the Capacity Planning and Service Level Management functions, as well as Performance Engineering during development. Capacity Planning is the projection of future resource requirements based on historical data and growth in system projections. Capacity plans must be concerned with responding to resource needs within budgetary constraints, Resource demand (e.g., year end, or quarterly), Peak periods (e.g., tax time), and depreciation on equipment.

Performance Analysis is the identification/observation of programs behavior using information gathered according to the program runs (i.e. it is a form of dynamic analysis).The goal of Performance Analysis is to determine which parts of a program are fully optimized for speed, memory and CPU utilization. Dynamic Code Analysis is the Analysis of computer software that is performed during execution of programs that are built from that software on real or virtual processes. Analysis that is performed during with-out executing programs is known as static analysis, as opposed to dynamic code analysis.

Data collection is the process by which data about application performance are obtained from an executing program. Data are normally collected in a file, either during or after execution, although in some situations it may be presented to the user in real time. Data transformation involves the processes for selecting, targeting, converting, and mapping data so that it may be used by multiple systems. Data Visualization is the graphical presentation of information, with the goal of providing the viewer with a qualitative understanding of the information contents.

Capacity planning:

Capacity planning is the science and art of estimating the space, computer, software, hardware and network infrastructure resources that will be needed over some future period of time. Ensure that sufficient computing resources are available so that workload can meet their service levels. Provide management with an understanding of where computing resources are being used. As with any good planning, Price results are not that much critical, but the process and the discipline giving an understanding of the problem. When conducting a capacity plan, the organization must understand the characteristics of its production systems, their future requirements and their priorities. More importantly, Capacity planning helps ensure that seasonal operational peaks which are generally critical to the business can met by the resources.

According to a survey of web application users, 86% websites are inadequate of non functional testing and also there are bugs resides in the application forever, this is been a major concern, particularly in the area of “Security and assessing peak load Performance Capacity”. The testing teams today have a much bigger challenge of anticipating the varied ways in which customers can use the systems and ensuring that the systems do behave properly when approached from a variety of ways.

There is well known interesting theory called “Rule of 8” – It specified that if the load-time of a web page exceeds eight seconds, users are unlikely to wait, or “stick around”, for its completion. So “Performance is a “must have” feature”, No matter how rich your application is functionally, if it fails to meet the performance expectations of your customer then the product will be branded a failure. Fast enough is not really enough; need to attach the security string to pull the customer confidence. Present emerging market is completely revolving with internet – Anywhere you can post your data and access your data. “How safe is the data as it navigates a complex internal and external network?” Turning all these performance and security risks into actionable results and mitigate, Testing is not solution and its not about just discovering defects, it is about de-risking delivery. It is about assessing risks as early possible in the SDLC to enable us to take appropriate actions to delivery quality on time.

Security assessment and Performance monitoring must take place throughout the entire project life cycle and need to have a new set of test process and methodology applied with right set of tools and correct blend of technical and business logic will help us to move to the next level. Web 2.0 brings in myriad ways of converting prospects to customers and providing a hassle free customer experience. SOA testing has really come up as another big thing in the world of Web 2.0. SOA will only makes sense if its tested in right way using right tools and right methodology. Today there are SOA test tools that can test the underlying interoperable components of an application without going through the front-end – not just from a functionality standpoint, but also from a Security and Performance standpoints.

In recent year’s social media, likely more than anything else has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed over the past few years because of tools like Facebook and Twitter might have been unimaginable for most people at the beginning of this decade. But social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one another and the world around us. Even it has an impact on the way we started spending our free time, there is a big influence of technique on our daily life. With the fact that we are seeing a trend where more and more people are moving away from traditional media and it’s creating vital challenge for companies and making them to think twice before dumping the usual amount of cash into traditional media marketing and advertising.

Common sense would tell you to take your message where the majority of the people are gathering and paying attention, which just happens to be Web 2.0(Shift in consumer habits: From expert driven content to User driven content) social mediums. The data is growing every single day. The number of connection points to the DATA is becoming increasingly available. Realizing what information is available about the business relationships becomes more critical as dollar value increases. Every dollar and every minute spend on marketing tactics is for one purpose: Business Growth!  Let me share this interesting quote from Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO – “People relate to people, not companies”, Social media provides us an opportunity to humanize the brand and engage the companies with consumers at personal level, which can provide substantial results in long-term like decreased customer support costs, customer feedback management, good PR and marketing channel to engage with target market.  Social Media is for every company that genuinely wants to engage with their customers, it doesn’t matter whether you are fortune brand or Local restaurant. As Sandy Carter, Marketing Head at IBM quoted, “I think the primary difference here is not in big or small company. But the difference is in how close you are to your customers”. I personally find that it is very interesting and exciting “Net Space” to be in and also rewarding if used in the right manner.

What is bad thing in Game testing ? Choose to Panic! Have you experienced Scuba diving or snorkeling?! Scuba divers put themselves in a situation similar to what game testers might face – Limited resources [the equipment you bring with you], time constraints [Air supply], rules to follow (rate of decent/ascent) and other surprises (unexpected sea visitors). Sometimes we may even be asked to accomplish something which we never done before, such as achieve 100% automation of the installation tests, or write a tool to verify the foreign language text in the game. Maybe no one has ever done this before. If you are not ready for a variety of test assignments and don’t have the skills needed to perform them successfully, then you will stumble rather than star. Study, practice, and experience are ingredients for good preparation. During the course of the project, try to get to know more about the game code. Keep up with the industry so you are also aware of what the next generation of games and technologies will be like. Become an expert in the requirements and designs for the parts of the game you are responsible for testing.

Computer games take from one to three years to develop (depending on scale). Testing begins late in the development process, sometimes from halfway to 75% into development (it starts so late because, until then, there is little to nothing to play or test). Testers get new builds from the developers on a schedule (daily/weekly) and each version must be uniquely identified in order to map errors to versions.

Once the testers get a version, they begin playing the game. Testers must carefully note any errors they uncover. These may range from bugs to art glitches to logic errors and level bugs. Some bugs are easy to document but many are hard to describe and may take several paragraphs to describe so a developer can replicate or find the bug. On a large-scale game with numerous testers, a tester must first determine whether the bug has already been reported before they can log the bugs themselves. Once a bug has been reported as fixed, the tester has to go back and verify that the fix works – and occasionally return to verify that is has not reappeared.

Evaluation of game rules: Game rules adequately explain operation of all components of the game including features, free games etc. Consistency with game rules and pay tables

UI and Functional test: Games outcome and data are correctly shown when games are played. Intermediate and final game outcomes are displayed for a reasonable time.

Verification the Integration points: Game win determination aligns with game rules.

Reviewing gaming procedures: procedures will be reviewed by System management, player account management, tournaments and promotions.

Infrastructure and security review: Secure and reliable operation for example time synchronization and OS reliability and security

You can follow few tips

• Need to identify the algorithm from Source code to identify issues
• RNG seeding checked in source code.
• Need to verify the source code appropriate use of random numbers, error handling, no unused variable etc…
• Need to verify the RNG mapping to make sure the output of game symbols, cards & other outcomes
• Need to test validate and evaluate the game predefined rules and its consistency
• Need to Make sure the indecent or offensive content/material display
• Irrespective of Single/Multi player games we need to validate bandwidth and client software.
• Reports need to validated with data accuracy Different date and time format, larger win, total money played, total no. of games etc.
• Infrastructure plays a vital role need to verify the network architecture and device configuration, OS reliability & security. Need to verify the gaming procedures with change control mechanism, game management and player management.

Keep all these tips and regardless of background experience in game programming and testing, anyone can become a game tester successfully.