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How-To: Quantify end users response time goals

Content Type: How-To
Author: Scott
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Summary:
Determining and quantifying application performance requirements and goals accurately is a critical component of valuable performance testing. Successfully verbalizing our application’s performance requirements and goals is the first and most important step in this process. Remember that when all is said and done, there is only one performance requirement that really matters: that application users are not annoyed or frustrated by poor performance. The users of your application don’t know or care what the results of your performance tests are, how many seconds it takes something to display on the screen past their threshold for "too long," or what your throughput is. The only thing application users know is that they either notice that the application seems slow or they don't – and users will notice (or not) based on anything from their mood to what they have become accustomed to. This How-To discusses methods for converting these feelings into numbers, but never forget to validate your quantification by putting the application in front of real users.

Objectives:

* Learn how to identify the difference between performance requirements and performance goals.
* Learn how to capture subjective performance requirements and goals.
* Learn how to quantify subjective performance requirements and goals.

Notes:

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