ISTQB Performance Testing - 2025

Explore metrics in performance testing, introduce the goal question metric approach, and show how to aggregate results across technical, business, and operational environments.

Identify why performance metrics matter and how accurate measurements guide performance testing. Define measurable requirements, establish baselines, and track trends to evaluate results.

Identify and tailor performance measurements to your context by selecting metrics like response time, resource utilization, and SLA compliance across technical, business, and operational environments.

Apply the goal-question-metric approach to select a focused metrics bundle for performance testing, aligning metrics with clear goals and avoiding unnecessary data overload.

Aggregate performance testing results into a single meaningful data point and a clear narrative for stakeholders, revealing system performance, trends, and whether response times stay within acceptable limits.

Identify the three musketeers of performance metric sources, performance test tools, monitoring tools, and log analysis tools, and learn to collect metrics smoothly, avoiding probe effects, for well-rounded system insights.

Learn to measure response time across varying load levels, and aggregate performance data to understand overall system performance and key metrics.

Explore how performance testing fits into software lifecycle across four segments with iterative testing, analysis, and improvement cycle, addressing ripple effects of technical decisions and architecture risks across development models.

Explore the seven performance testing activities—planning, monitoring and control, analysis, design, implementation, execution, and completion—and how iterative cycles refine load, risks, and SLAs for real-world systems.

Explore performance risks across architectures, from single computers to cloud based, mobile, embedded real time, and mainframe systems. Learn how architecture choices and tech decisions shape performance.

Explore performance risks across software development life cycle using a four-step process with technical stakeholders to identify, assess, mitigate, and manage risks to time behavior, resource utilization, and capacity.

Identify the performance requirements to shape your testing plan, and review design and architecture with experienced performance engineers to mitigate risks early in iterative development.

Plan and execute performance testing across planning, analysis and design and implementation, and execution phases, deriving and communicating objectives, building a robust test plan, and reporting results against objectives.

Derive performance test objectives by aligning user base and technical goals with stakeholders, define transactions and average response time, and specify system metrics to guide the performance test plan.

Learn to communicate performance testing effectively to both business and technical stakeholders, detailing the performance test plan, costs, risks, and how to run repeatable loads in production and test environments.

Explore typical communication protocols and OSI layers (5–7) shaping performance testing, from ODBC and JDBC to HTTP, HTTPS, HTML, SOAP, REST, XML, JSON, and SQL, with end-to-end focus.

Identify and construct operational profiles by collecting data on user personas, roles, and tasks to inform load profiles for performance testing.

Create realistic and repeatable load profiles using virtual users and operational profiles, detailing ramp ups, ramp downs, steps, and distributions to simulate production conditions.

Analyze throughput and concurrency to model workload profiles and forecast system performance. Compare processing time and think time with virtual users and concurrency, and differentiate closed versus open systems.

Implement performance test scripts by translating load profiles into parameterized paths that simulate new and returning users through recording or programming, with correlation and think times.

Execute performance testing by generating load against the system under test per a predefined scenario, monitor the environment in real time, and collect results and related information.

Analyze performance test results by comparing metrics to objectives defined in the performance test plan, identify root causes, and generate actionable reports with recommendations for hardware, software, and network improvements.

Explore essential performance testing topics through practical questions and answers, covering objectives, test plans, operational profiles, load profiles, throughput, concurrency, and script design.

Explore the backbone of performance testing by examining tools, including load generators, load management consoles, and monitoring tools, and assess tool suitability against interfaces, platforms, and testing team's capabilities.

Explore tool support for performance testing, including load generators, the load management console, and monitoring tools, to simulate real-world traffic, collect metrics, and analyze results.

Choose the right performance testing tool by evaluating compatibility, interfaces to external components, and platform alignment for scalable load generation and effective monitoring.

Explore how performance testing and load testing tools support agile e-commerce projects, emphasizing cost-effective options like open source licenses. Understand the importance of tool compatibility, scalability, and monitoring.