Product companies are today facing stiffer challenges due to rising customer expectations. There is intense competition to deliver high-quality applications in ever-shorter release cycles. Users are always looking for applications that are fast, seamless, and accessible. Also, they are constantly clamouring for new features. This need for both speed and application quality is putting tremendous pressure on the development teams.
Be it of any type, software testing remains an integral part of any SDLC. This necessity underlines the importance of embracing a proactive approach to quality assurance, shifting the focus towards early defect detection and resolution. However, most product defects or errors detected during the testing phase are introduced during the requirements or planning stage of the development cycle. Consider this; integrated testing happens when almost 90% of the product development is complete. This means that any serious design or architectural flaw in the product is difficult to fix at a later stage.
Fundamentally, software testing is intended to address Quality of Service (or QoS) goals in any organisation. However, “traditional” testing paradigms only fulfil these needs partially. Most of the time, testing remains a reactive process. Companies need more proactive approach to fix product defects at their source. This article sheds light on the same. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Why Should Application Defects Be Fixed at the Source?
According to the Google Cloud “State of DevOps” report, the “change failure rate” can rise up to 60%. A change failure rate is the percentage of product changes (at the production stage) that lead to degradation in service and require immediate remediation. For high-quality products, the change failure rate is typically under 15%. However, this only addresses known defects reported by QA engineers.
Application defects that are detected in the later part of the SDLC are more expensive to fix and time-consuming. For the best results, software validation must start from the early phases of application development to ensure application performance, availability, and scalability once launched. Early testing with an eye on developing it right can benefit product companies in the following ways :-
• Gain a time-to-market advantage over competitors
• Avoid any cost escalations due to testing
• Stop a defective product from entering the production environment
• Avoid penalties as a result of a defective product (penalties can be in the form of losing customers, revenue, etc.)
The popular adage, “Prevention is better than cure,” is now more relevant to application development and testing. This approach aligns with the evolving expectations of digital customer experience, ensuring applications meet users’ demands from the outset. Now, a product defect in software development can introduce a substantial variance from the desired attributes. Besides failing to meet design requirements and quality standards, application defects create unhappy customers.
Traditional testing methods are no more effective at preventing defects or errors. Even with the most efficient testing approaches, critical product errors can still make it to the production environment. In a competitive market, this is no longer acceptable.
How can a more proactive application performance engineering approach help in addressing these challenges? Let’s discuss that in the next section.
How the Proactive Application Performance Engineering Approach Can Work
Application performance engineering is a more proactive and end-to-end approach to application testing and monitoring. Using a continuous feedback system, it enables seamless collaboration among development and QA teams and their processes. It enables the efficient “shift-left” approach to both performance testing and monitoring.
This method of performance engineering represents a cultural shift in how organizations view their business and delivery processes. This shift not only enhances product quality but also aligns with modern DevOps and Agile practices, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration among development teams. This approach adopts the best practices and capabilities that can build both quality and performance in any organization.
By definition, application performance engineering is an essential practice in any DevOps environment, which enables Architects and app developers to remain agile and efficient.
Using this approach, development companies can create and test the application performance on various platforms including :-
• Mobile phones and personal devices
• Cloud platforms
• Traditional IT environments
With this innovative approach, Engineering teams can also detect any performance-related issues much earlier in the app development phase, thus delivering high-quality products to their customers.
How does application performance engineering make a significant difference?
Here are some of its benefits :-
• Delivers end-to-end product optimisation through continuous testing and monitoring
• Enables collaboration among product stakeholders, including business analysts, developers, and testers
• Creates a Centre of Excellence (COE) for application testing with the best practices, testing models, and technologies to improve test quality
• Enables code reviews and defect fixing during the application development process
How does performance engineering deliver better results than “traditional” testing?
Here are some highlights :-
• Thanks to its “shift-left” approach, performance engineering is a more suitable fit for today’s Agile and DevOps environments. Traditional testing approaches were better suited for the Waterfall model of application development.
• Traditional software testing primarily focuses on performing quality checks on products. On the other hand, performance engineering aims to embed performance-related metrics into the application design right from the start.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the adoption of a proactive Application Performance Engineering approach is crucial for mitigating downtime and enhancing operational efficiency, ensuring that applications not only function optimally but also deliver exceptional user experiences.
Proactive Application Performance Engineering is a suitable alternative to traditional testing.
With its innovative P-A-S-S (Performance, Availability, Scalability, Security) platform, Avekshaa offers its global customers a proactive approach to achieving quality assurance. Using our P-A-S-S engineering solutions, our customers have effectively enabled early detection of product flaws, thus preventing failures at a later stage.
Looking to improve your application performance? We can help. Contact us today!