Building a Performance Test Capability from Scratch
Have you ever been dragged into a production emergency that severely drains deadlines, budgets, morale, and weekends only to find out—yet again—that the problem is related to application stability and performance under load? Building a culture that embraces proactive and well-planned performance testing is no small feat. Tom Poirier shares a journey that begins with clarifying enterprise performance requirements, performing competitive analysis, cost-justifying purchases, and closing the deal with senior management. Tom walks through practical challenges including technical difficulties, connecting the dots, talent acquisition, and cultural differences between agile and waterfall teams in engaging projects in the most effective way. He expands the role and utility of performance testing to include infrastructure, architecture, cloud, mobile, DevOps, Big Data, and the Omni-Channel Experience. Join Tom as he introduces practical metrics to track progress and trends, and candidly surveys the scores of projects he and his teams have delivered.
Tom Poirier is manager of the performance and automation solutions group at IDEXX Laboratories, the worldwide market leader in immunology and diagnostics for animals. At IDEXX, he introduced performance testing in 2014 and has built it into a capability that delivers more than thirty projects annually across the enterprise. With more than two decades of experience in software performance testing and automation, Tom has spent his career helping Fortune 500 companies and government agencies with their software performance and automation needs. A cofounder of Worksoft and past president of the New England Software Quality Assurance Forum, Tom is a frequent speaker at software development groups, QA groups, PMI chapters, and agile groups.