Define the Test Scope

Define Your Goals

Typical goals of a load test, for web or mobile applications, are as follows:

• Determine the user limit for the application.
  • The user limit is the maximum number of simultaneous users that the application can support while remaining stable and providing reasonable response time to users as they use the application as intended.
  • The user limit should be higher than the required number of concurrent users that the application must support when it is deployed.
• Determine client-side degradation and end user experience under load.
  • Can users get to the application in a timely manner?
  • Are users able to use the application as intended within an acceptable time?
  • How does the time of day, number of concurrent users, transactions and usage affect the performance of the application?
  • Is the degradation "graceful?" Under heavy loading conditions, does the application behave correctly in "slow motion," or do components crash and/or send erroneous/incomplete pages to the client?
  • What is the failure rate that users observe? Is it within acceptable limits? Under heavy loading conditions do most users continue to complete their business transactions or do a large number of users receive error messages?
• Determine server-side robustness and degradation.
  • Does the Web server crash under heavy load?
  • Does the application server crash under heavy load?
  • Do the other middle-tier servers crash or slow down under heavy load?
  • Does the database server crash under heavy load?
  • Does the system load require balancing, or if a load balancing system is in place, is it functioning correctly?
  • Can the current architecture be fine-tuned to extract better performance?
  • Should hardware changes be made for improved performance?
  • Are there any resource deadlocks in my system?

Collect Records On Daily Users

Find out your daily users and add it to your test plan or in the comments below. You will need this information for setting up your load test.

Understand Your Application Spike Hours

Research when your application receives a sudden increase in activity (Spike Hours).

Know Your KPIs

Your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for web applications probably include the following: