Just Another Manic Cyber Monday: Are you Ready?

Once September starts to roll around it seems like everyone’s preparing for something, be it returning to school, the fantasy football season, corporate budget planning, or looking for deals on end of model year vehicles. For me, it’s the time of year when I help people prepare for Cyber Monday, which has become the biggest online shopping day of the year.

So, is your website really ready to capitalize on all that buying fervor? Think about it. By September, your company is surely finalizing new products and marketing campaigns for the holiday season. But all those preparations will be for naught if your website isn't up to the challenge of increased holiday traffic – especially if your ops group doesn't have a system in place to monitor and react to the impact of that traffic in real time. The truth is, if your organization doesn't have a strategy in place by early September, you have a scant few weeks remaining to put one together. After that is done, you’re at serious risk of becoming ‘that company’ – you know, the one that makes headlines this holiday season for a massive site outage instead of record sales numbers – and the risk increases exponentially with every week you delay. If your company sells products that people want to give as gifts for the holidays, Cyber Monday is likely to be the busiest day of the year for your website.

Read the rest of this post here.
 
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Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

I don't produce software systems.
I help those who do produce software systems do it better.
I am a tester.

10 Things About Testing That Should Die

I've taken some heat for discussing the whole "is test dead" concept due to a feeling that I was validating the concept of testing being unnecessary. Allow me to clarify my position. I do not believe, for one heartbeat, that testing as an activity is in any way unnecessary. I do believe that there are things related to the current state of and common beliefs about testing that should die. With that said...

Scott Barber's Top 10 Things About Testing That Should Die: 

10. Egocentricity

Face reality testers, neither the product nor the business revolve around you. Think about it. No business, no product, no developers => no need for testers. In fact, if developers wrote perfect code, there'd be no need for you. You are a service provider and your primary clients are the managers, developers, and/or executives. Your secondary clients are product users and investors. So stop whining and stomping your feet when your clients don't make decisions you like with the information you provide. It's not your call. If you want it to be your call, get on track to become a project manager, product manager, or executive, otherwise, get right with the fact that you provide a service (hopefully a valuable one) and get back to providing it.

A misleading benchmark...

No further commentary needed.


 
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Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

4-Second Rule?

 It looks like Juniper Research has finally done away with the 8-second rule in favor of a 4-second rule. I want to point something out right up front... This new "rule" is based on a survey that asks the question...

Question: Typically, how long are you willing to wait for a single Web page to load before leaving the Web site? (Select one.)
A. More than 6 seconds.
B. 5-6 seconds.
C. 3-4 seconds.
D. 1-2 seconds.
E. Less than 1 second.

Sorry Juniper - I promise that if we sat down with your respondents and asked them to identify how many seconds various pages took to load that MOST of them would not get it right and that MOST of the wrong ones *think* a page takes longer to load than it actually does. Reviewing the report for yourself here: http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2006/press_110606.html
 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Tester thinking...

Say you were given the following requirements...

•   Users shall be able to enter any of nine predefined data objects
•   User interface shall consist of nine blocks of three rows and three columns
•   Each row, column and/or block shall accept only one member of each data object

What am I describing?