Load Testing Scenarios Selection Approaches in Perfoqamcne testing

Load Testing Scenarios Selection Approaches

We have discussed above the different principles regarding the selection of your load testing scenarios. Further in this section, we will discuss different approaches which a performance testing team could follow to affectively select load testing scenarios. We will define a mechanism here for scenarios selection.

Identify AUT’s all Scenarios

You will select your load test scenarios based on the above mentioned criteria. So it’s necessary to have a complete list of application scenarios before making your choice. Start the activity by developing a complete list of all the features of the AUT.

This approach will make sure that you are not missing even a single application scenario which should be a part of your load test. In a typical E-commerce web application, most common scenarios could be,

• Browsing the Catalog
• Product Searching
• Order Placement

Identification of Scenario Activities

Once you have figured out all the application scenarios, next step is to identify users’ activities within every scenario. This activity will help you to dig more into the AUT and get more application insights to make a wise selection. For example, following activities would be involved in Order Placement scenario of an E-commerce web application:

• Login to application
• Browse the product catalog
• Searching for the desired product
• Select the product and its quantity
• Add selected product to your shopping cart
• Validate your payment method
• Place the order

Scenarios Selection

Comparing the application scenarios (based on the above mentioned criteria) can be the next action once you have list down the details of all the activities of AUT scenarios. You can assign certain weight-age to every criterion (based on its importance for load testing) and give appropriate weight to every scenario and compare your scenarios’ importance based on their aggregate score/weight. The top score scenarios will be the best candidates for load testing.

Share your selected scenarios with all the application stakeholders and get their approval before formally start working on them. Load testing is a very complex and costly activity and any missing or additionally picked scenario can not only invalidate your test results in production environment but can also be the cause of waste of lots of money and efforts.