Why Performance testing is important and why being a Product Manger you should care about this?

Customer happiness is dependent on performance testing , if your application's performance does not satisfy their expectations, they will move on to a competitor. Performance testing is difficult and time-consuming. It is critical to completely comprehend the problems of performance testing, as well as the process and tools available to develop an effective performance test & planning a comprehensive test strategy.

• Network difficulties effect mobile applications, especially when the server is overloaded. It’s considerably more problematic if the applications are running on unreliable mobile networks. Some of the issues that apps encounter in this situation are as follows:

Issues while downloading images or broken images.

Content feed not refreshing

Booking or checkout errors

Frequent timeouts

Stalling and Freezing

Failed upload

• A poor application experience leads to unhappy customers, which leads to revenue loss. According to a study, when customers are faced broken image, over 50% of users would leave the application and moves on to the competitor.
• The speed of the application varies by region. Some countries offer 2G service, while others have 3G and 4G. It’s crucial to make sure that app users all over the world can use it easily and without any network troubles. In developed countries such as the USA , UK , Germany e.t.c, app has a strong likelihood of performing well. However, in developing countries such as South Asia , African countries the same app cab be performing slow.
• A system may work smoothly with only 1,000 concurrent users, but if the user base grows to 10,000, it may behave unpredictably. Under heavy demand, performance testing analyses whether the system achieves high speed, scalability, and stability.

Performance testing allows product managers to measure the performance of the
system as the number of concurrent users or actions increases. We will know the response time

and the amount of system resource consumption at the app’s peak points. This is highly helpful
in case our app has traffic spikes (where, during a certain season or period of time, the number
of visitors surges and decreases shortly after).

● Validate the use of hardware. Through performance testing, product team will ensure that low CPU usage or little server storage will not prevent the app from functioning according to the requirements.

● Determine the capacity of the application. We’ll be able to determine if the current software is capable of matching the set of metrics designed beforehand (peak traffic load, server response time, and so on).

● Measure and assess the performance of the app on the protocol level.A tester will be able to get a realistic simulation of real traffic, create a load profile, and measure the response time.

● Check the app’s performance under critical conditions. A developer will be able to establish the limits of the app’s performance. This way, you’ll be able to predict and prevent system crashes.Strategy for Performance Testing Mobile Apps.

In order to successfully execute performance testing, a Product Manager Manager has to come up with a strategy. A step-by-step performance testing plan consists of the following steps

1. Align test objectives and business requirements
   Performance testing will only be as good as its goals. When setting objectives for each case, we make sure they correspond to business scopes of building an app. Being the part of Product team top priority would be to assess the functions of the app that are crucial for lead generation – the cart feature for e-commerce stores, the registration and contact form, and so on. At this stage, the testing team gets to know the architecture of the product to the best extent possible – including its presentation, business, and data levels.
2. Identify test KPIs
   1:Error rate
   2:Average & Maximum response time
   3:CPU / Memory Utilization on the device
   4:Peak number of requests
   5:Average throughput and the peak number of concurrent active users per device(android & ios)
   6:Churn Rate
   7:Retention Rate
   8: Average Load time
   9:Wait time / Average latency
3. Prioritize scenarios
   Testing all the features of the app all at once without prior selection of cases is a common trap for a Product Person to fall into. Instead, it’s better to outline multiple packet scenarios that are crucial for the app’s reliable performance and prioritize those accordingly using any framework. After we have assured crucial features work properly, we would move in deeper and test less significant scenarios.
4. Simulate a real-life testing environment
   The testing environment is crucial in order to understand the user experience of the app the way people will after it’s live. In order to speed up the testing process, QA specialists mostly use system emulators. Such tools do a good job of emulating the basic parameters of an operating system and allow testers to get a sense of the look and feel of the interface. However, to assess the performance of features that require camera permission, GPS, and other device-specific functions, it’s better to use real hardware.
5. Align the testing approach with the overall development methodology
   Testing should fit into a company’s general development framework. For Agile, the tester should be ready to implement the principles of continuous integration. This means embracing regular bug reports and regression tests. Adopting the same methodology for testing as for development allows both parties involved to be on the same page regarding the project, improve communication, and speed up the decision-making process.
6. Keep the latency and the bandwidth of a carrier network in mind while testing
   Due to the fact that mobile devices are connected to the internet through third-party carriers, the latency and bandwidth of the networks can vary. Keeping the carrier network differences in mind allows a Product team to optimize the app’s performance and improve user experience.