New release of StressTester™ offers paradigm shift in performance testing capability to Agile development community

StressTester™ v7.2, the latest release of Reflective Solutions’ performance testing software, has become the first purpose designed tool to enable correct and realistic performance testing during every iteration of an Agile project. 

The result is that application software performance issues can be quickly and easily identified and resolved as they are implemented, rather than at the end of the development process, enabling the Agile development community to benefit from greater efficiencies in project management, costs and timescales.

StressTester’s unique offering to the Agile community has been made possible because its zero-scripting approach and rapid configuration make it quick and easy to learn and deploy.  By reducing traditional testing timescales from weeks to days, it allows developers to finally treat performance testing with the same importance as unit and acceptance testing and gives them the means to execute a correct performance test at the end of every iteration.  Becoming proficient with StressTester typically only requires a couple of hours of watching the tool’s in-built tutorial videos. This means that any member of the Agile team can quickly learn to execute performance tests compared with other tools that require scripting experts.

Prior to the launch of StressTester v7.2, performance testing would typically be executed at the end of the Agile development process.  Traditional performance testing tools are not suited for execution during Agile project iterations due to their complex scripting requirements that can add weeks to the project timescale. 

Graham Parsons, CEO of Reflective Solutions, said: “The new release of StressTester™ has been designed to respond to a very real and immediate need in the Agile marketplace and initial feedback we’ve received from the Agile community has been overwhelmingly positive. The standard industry practice of performance testing at the end of the Agile development process, is fundamentally flawed.  If performance defects implemented in an early iteration are not discovered until a project is nearing completion, the process of identifying and fixing the problem can lead to costly rework and significant delays to the software release schedule.  This can easily threaten the overall success of a project.

“With the new release of StressTester, Agile projects can now execute a performance test during every iteration, if not every day. When a performance defect is created in the code, it will be detected during the current iteration and will be simple and quick to fix. StressTester’s ease-of-use means it can be used by all members of the project team, and its rapid configuration allows performance tests to be executed without delaying the project.”

StressTester is an enterprise class performance testing tool used by global organisations to verify the performance of their mission critical systems.  Designed to reduce costs and project timescales by as much as 80 per cent when compared to rival products, the solution offers in-depth analysis of any web application’s performance, scalability and load capacity. The tool provides a feature-rich testing environment, yet does not require a single line of testing script to be written, making StressTester highly accessible and simple to implement.

Click here to visit the StressTester website.

Stress At Speed

Performance testing must be executed in real time, but crucial time can be saved in test design and specification. Graham Parsons describes an urgent test project and how StressTester helped to deliver it.

At Reflective Solutions we believe our product StressTester is a completely new breed of performance testing tool. Its totally scriptless nature makes it capable of delivering realistic testing with accurate results much faster than can be achieved with other tools. To explain how, I will describe a recent client project: a new web-based enterprise resource planning web application using IBM Maximo was performance tested in less than five days…

To read more, click here to visit the StressTester website and download a PDF of the full article.

It’s not too late to maximise online Christmas revenues

Graham Parsons points out on www.retailtechnology.co.uk that, as budget cuts continue and with Christmas now only weeks away, the pressure is on for retailers to ensure that their websites are well equipped in anticipation of the annual festive stampede. Read the full story here.

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For more information on StressTester, visit www.stresstester.com.

On The Road With StressTester

Just a quick update on the London Tester Gathering sessions I attended last week. Both resulted in very late nights, but everything else was positive!  Both sessions were very well attended – over 45 attendees at each. The majority of attendees were testers and there was a lot of interest in StressTester. The ‘StressTester for Agile’ demo I delivered was well received. It seems we are very well positioned in this space, with very little competition.

As a result of attending,  I have invitations to speak at an Agile Evangelist meet-up in the New Year and another testing event soon after. Further details to follow. In light of the success of the meet-ups, I’m certainly planning on attending on a regular basis. If anyone out there is interested in a StressTester demo at a tester gathering, get in touch.

Ian Tunnicliffe

www.stresstester.com

Most Major Ticketing Websites Crashed This Morning As Take That 2011 Tour Tickets Went On Sale

Graham Parsons, CEO of Reflective Solutions and one of the UK’s leading experts in website performance testing, explains why it is totally unacceptable – and preventable – for websites to fail under the weight of heavy user traffic: 

“There is absolutely no need for websites to crash under heavy traffic load; consumers should realize that it is totally preventable.  Site owners blame the ‘technology’ behind the site for not being able to cope at peak traffic times, but the truth is that web development teams have the power to do something about it.  While sites can crash under heavy user loads for various reasons, this type of failure can actually be prevented if the actual web application itself and the hardware/network resources including the capacity of the Internet connection, are correct and realistically tested.

“Testing a website under conditions which simulate hundreds or thousands of users logging on simultaneously, allows site owners to correct errors and failures.  This will ultimately ensure that the site performs optimally under heavy traffic in the real world.  The reason that most site owners do not undertake performance testing which accurately reflects real user traffic numbers is because performance testing traditionally takes weeks to undertake and requires the expertise of expensive script writers.  Corners are often cut to allow development and site launch timescales to be realized and budgets to be kept on track. 

“A new breed of scriptless performance testing software is now available which allows non-testing experts to undertake correct and realistic performance testing in days rather than weeks.  These tools – including StressTester™ – really are revolutionizing site performance testing.  Ultimately, their availability means that there can be no excuse for websites to fail under heavy user traffic.”

http://www.stresstester.com/