Performance testing is vital throughout the lifestyle of any application. However, if done in the early stages of application development, it can help save organizations a significant amount of costs and efforts that may need to be put in at a later stage. Often, in the initial stages, pressures for quick deployment lead to rigorous performance testing being put off, or postponed for a later stage.
Reviewing performance of any application has to be an ongoing process, because despite rigorous testing, the real world throws up challenges that may be unusual or not understood previously. Even after different reviews and tests are conducted on particular software, assessing its efficacy in the real world can be a challenge, given network conditions and user behavior. Probably one of the biggest challenges faced by experts is accurately predicting application performance on the basis of its testing.
Not integrating product development with performance
Not many developers understand the need to integrate performance in the development and deployment plan for an application. As a result, performance testing gets jeopardized, beginning with development of the application. Also, the application may lose out on the benefits of performance testing applied in initial stages, costing the organization a lot more in poor performance or frequent performance glitches in the later stages. This can get compounded depending on which stage of its lifecycle the product is at. At post-deployment stage, the costs and efforts of fixing software issues can be high enough to cause significant damage in terms of money, and worse, user experience and loyalty.
As a major Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, and business software management tool, the Microsoft Dynamics suite presents a lot of usable features, including multiple modules and software configurations, making testing an even more challenging prospect. However, when successfully deployed, it can make for a very effective application to maximize your efforts and optimize your services in terms of both, quality and time.
What are the areas that need careful scrutiny for Microsoft Dynamics Testing?
1. Planned testing: Ideally, the testing should be a well-planned affair. If you're employing a vendor to carry out the deployment, ensure that the testing is comprehensive.
2. Make testing mandatory: The business for whom deployment is to be done, should be informed about the testing so that adequate provision of time can be made.
3. Anticipatory checks: Based on the requirements for the Microsoft Dynamics suite and its functionality, certain problems can be anticipated and testing undertaken for them, specially.
4. Covering all ground: Testing should include every aspect of the business requirements from Microsoft Dynamics.
5. Taking care of technical details: If your vendor is familiar with testing and Microsoft Dynamics performance monitoring, activities such as data migration, if needed, should be identified and tested.
6. Creating mock scenarios: If the testing environment can replicate a possible situation involving Microsoft Dynamics environment, the viability of the entire operation gets verified better.
7. Testing Performance: Performance and factors like availability need to be thoroughly tested as well. To an extent, this can ensure that problems in the future get taken care of.
Management or review of application performance can often be incomplete because it tends to concentrate on the process of monitoring alone, and not for errors that may be expected or anticipated to occur in the lifecycle of the application. One of the reasons for this could be that anticipating problems or errors is never an easy task. Further, problems that do not have a precedent are often not easy to predict. Application monitoring is an intrinsic part of performance management, but it cannot prevent issues and application failures by itself, but if it is applied in a thorough manner, it may help raise timely alerts and reveal corrective measures that could be taken.
Elements to take care of, when managing application performance
Performance management needs to focus on whether the application will meet its end-user expectations or not. Outline application expectations, if needed, before going ahead with the monitoring agenda. Application monitoring will work best when it goes hand-in-hand with end-user expectations. Understanding user expectations will also help you outline a monitoring plan that will take precise as well as overall care of all the most important areas within the application. Another advantage to outlining user expectations is to ensure that you have all the monitoring tools in place. This will also ensure optimizing of the application monitoring process itself.
Remember to also measure the impact of application monitoring on the performance of the application, versus the results in case there is no monitoring in place.
How to determine the ideal time for application monitoring?
There is no fixed way by which to determine the right time to begin application monitoring. However, certain elements can become pointers.
> Over utilization: If an application is being utilized above its core capabilities, it may utilize more memory and need monitoring to pinpoint the precise problem. Over utilization may occur in terms of usage time or the number of users accessing it at any given time.
> System crash: At times, errors may occur unexpectedly. This can result in sudden breakdown or total stopping of the application's functions. Application monitoring that is thorough and comprehensive can catch a potential error before it brings about a complete system breakdown.
> Software failure: Software failures can be major contributors to application breakdown. However, regular monitoring can help raise timely alerts and allow you to take corrective action before the software fails entirely.
> Regular updates: If your software is not updated regularly, it can remain vulnerable to threats such as virus attacks or even hardware failure and configuration problems. Application monitoring can help determine critical updates needed and raise timely alerts so that appropriate action can be taken.
Critical elements
Application monitoring should cover everything, from server downtime to software, to processes and services, as well as hardware. Application monitoring can also include configuration changes. Application monitoring must be implemented keeping in mind it must be kept in mind that costs incurred in repairs and maintenance could be significantly higher than those incurred in monitoring.
About the Author:
Tevron develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, Automated Testing Solutions, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.
