Load Testing

Agile software development consists of both functional testing as well as non-functional testing. When it comes to non-functional testing, load testing is one of the most prominent tests that you need to do. Load testing is a type of non-functional software testing in which a software application’s performance is evaluated under a specified load. It controls how the software program acts when several people access it at the same time. Load testing is used to identify performance bottlenecks and assure the stability and smooth operation of software applications prior to deployment.

You do load testing to determine maximum operating capacity of a software and to determine whether existing infrastructure is sufficient enough to launch the application. You will also determine the overall sustainability of the application with related to peak user load via load testing. On top of everything, load testing can help you to understand the total number of concurrent users, which the application can support at a time.

If your software gets more users than it is supposed to, it will crash. Hence, you should ensure that desired number of users can access the system without encountering any problems. That’s where you should do load testing. You will ensure performance and reliability of the system with load testing.

You can do load testing through multiple approaches. They include manual load testing, using open source load testing tools, or using enterprise level load testing tools. Before you do load testing, you should create a test environment. Then you need to create load test scenarios. After that, you can prepare data for each and every transaction, and execute the test cases. Upon analyzing the results, you can fine-tune the system to accept desired load, and retest.

— Slimane Zouggari