Technical testing and continous performance management

There is an interesting paper on best practices for continous performance management here. You will need to register to access the paper, which covers code profiling, integration performance testing and load testing as part of a continuous build environment.

The author, Steven Haines, examines the concepts of Ant, test driven development and the creation of a continuous build environment using Cruisecontrol. He also reviews the inclusion of load testing in the continuous build environment, using JMeter as an example of measuring load, and using the artefacts generated by the tests to programmatically check response times against a service level agreement.

In summary, Steven demonstrates by example the importance of bringing performance testing right to the forefront of the development cycle, rather than an activity at the end, and in the context of the cost of not doing so, makes the point that not only should this be best practice, but standard practice.