Conveying Performance Test Results with Data Visualization

Performance and load testing generate barrels of data about transaction times, hardware resource utilization, and system behaviors. Your job as a performance engineer is not only to know how to use automated tools to create this data, but also to summarize, interpret, draw conclusions, and effectively communicate the results of tests. Do your job well, and management will be compelled to act on your recommendations. Dan Downing describes the tools and techniques he regularly employs for creating displays and graphs that visually correlate complex application performance and system resources metrics, turning a mass of data into concise and powerful information. Participants will walk away with specific techniques for using Excel and commercial or open source load testing tools to develop and clearly communicate performance test results.

• The results graphs that support performance/load testing objectives
• Key system metrics that portray scalability, bottlenecks, capacity, and page presentation times
• The right Excel graph type and Excel's graph customization features