We do a lot of load testing, on a huge variety of platforms from clients like Tesco who use the big end platforms such as ATG, through scores of sites where we do .Net load testing or Java /WebSphere, and then web-technologies from Ruby to PHP and cool frameworks like Cappuccino.
Magento load testing has become an interesting area, and one where the lesson of ‘premature optimisation’ does matter
The volunteer team who have put this event together for the last 3 years can pat themselves on the back, it was another great occasion.
Putting in your own weekend time means that folk are there to be active, participate and learn from each other, and the variety of talks on offer reflected that enthusiasm.
A proud moment too when Shish from my SciVisum team did one of the most popular talks – on Web Performance optimisation – and there were some other good snippets.
Last night I spoke at the Agile Testers London Meet Up on: The Lessons We Learnt Load Testing The Website Of A Large UK Retailer.
The MeetUp is always a lively event. Last night in particular there were a lot of excellent questions from the floor, and some very interesting “compare and contrast” discussions with folks from a wide spectrum of organisations from Marks & Spencers, O2 and Sainsburys through to Aviva.
But one startling issue that arose is how few companies are load testing the ‘real thing’: their live site!
On Tuesday and Wednesday (12th and 13th of March) I was in Earls Court London, at the Retail Business Technology Expo, speaking in the Innovation Theatre.
There were some great presentations during the day including one stand out slot by Julian Burnett, Head of IT Architecture at John Lewis, where they are embracing change at quite a pace for such a large organisation.
Online retailing technology is fast changing at the moment – and there was one startling message I picked up during the day…
It was a treat on Friday to be at the DevopsDays London Conference and to get the chance to speak to, and share the platform with, some of the leading exponents of the new joined-up DevOps world.
There was some fascinating discussion, with some tips and tricks in the “Monitor Everything” and the “Log Everything” sessions.
We’re not one for big scale marketing here – no razzmatazz. A lot of our work comes by word of mouth and referrals.
So it was a warm feeling this week, to be told openly: ‘SciVisum, you’re the market leader‘.
As long as there has been software, there has been testing. Good testing has always been centred on the business outcomes. It’s not just about finding bugs, it’s about finding Important Bugs: bugs that impact the end user or customer.
Mike Brown of uTest jogged my memory recently when his blog referenced the timeless ‘Classic Testing Mistakes‘ by Brian Marick, from back in 1999. One of Brian’s points still stands out as a very powerful approach that directly aids eCommerce Managers in today’s world, more, in fact, than it has any previous generations of technology management.
With two kids, it’s very rare I give up a Saturday for work.
But the edgeconf this weekend looked like it was going to be worth it: with panel discussions not vendor keynotes! It also featured some of the actual hands-on guys doing the leading edge stuff, from the major browsers Chrome, Firefox and Opera, as well as some of the sharpest developers who are delivering business value from the least technologies.
The conference was organised by the guys from FT Labs, those responsible for the FT Newspaper’s HTML5 site that allows readers to read the paper on and off-line. Offline is when your device is no longer connected to the Internet, which for a normal website would mean you can’t access any more content. However an Offline Web Application can carry on working and serving page content it has grabbed in advance so that the user experience is seamless.
My specific interest in Web performance cropped up in several of the slots, with some interesting new tips to take away.
It’s a regular theme at many meetings I have, everyone working together, trying to motivate teams from development, testing opps and marketing, and get them all focused on a vital issue…
We don’t want customers to be the first to tell us about performance problems on our site!
Extremely rarely, a client will be worried about their problems getting onto the local TV news, or national news.
But the BBC website was very open about problem on February 6th.
Now and again in the business of Website Performance Management, I come across something with the punch of a striking truth behind it.
Today it was something that Stephen Nelson-Smith had written, and that linked back in my mind to what Chris Howell (then online Director at Dixons Stores) had said on the speakers podium at Retail Business Expo 2011 (see video of presentation).
Latest: . Sock Shop On Using SciVisum Data in SLAs
Read our case studies to find out exactly how our web testing services have helped clients optimise the user experience delivered by their web applications.
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