Performance—responsiveness and scalability—is a make-or-break quality for software. Software Performance Engineering companies (SPE) provides a systematic, quantitative approach to constructing software systems that meets the ultimate performance objectives. It prescribes ways to build performance into new systems rather than trying to fix them later.

Software Performance Engineering is a software-oriented approach; it focuses on architecture, design, and implementation choices. Performance Engineering companies uses model predictions to evaluate trade-offs in software functions, hardware size, quality of results, and resource requirements. The models assist developers in controlling resource requirements by enabling them to select architecture and design alternatives with acceptable performance characteristics. The models aid in tracking performance throughout the development process and prevent problems from surfacing late in the life cycle (typically during final testing).

Performance Engineering Objectives:

• Increase business revenue by ensuring the system can process transactions within the stipulated timeframe
• Eliminate system failure requiring scrapping and writing off the system development effort due to performance objective failure
• Eliminate late system deployment due to performance issues
• Eliminate avoidable system rework due to performance issues
• Eliminate avoidable system tuning efforts
• Avoid additional and unnecessary hardware acquisition costs
• Reduce increased software maintenance costs due to performance problems in production
• Reduce increased software maintenance costs due to software impacted by ad hoc performance fixes
• Reduce additional operational overhead for handling system issues due to performance problems

What Does It Cost?

The cost of using SPE to proactively manage software performance depends on the size and complexity of the system under development, the level of performance risk, and the expertise and experience of the development team, as well as other factors. If not meeting your performance goals would endanger the success of your project, you have a performance risk. Factors that increase performance risk include: the use of new technologies, lack of experience in the application area, schedule, market factors, and others.

Conclusion

Performance failures occur when a software product is unable to meet its overall objectives due to inadequate performance. Performance failures negatively impact your bottom line by increasing costs, decreasing revenue or both.

The primary cause of performance failures is a reactive approach to performance during the development process. Cost and schedule pressures encourage project managers to adopt a “fix-it later” approach in which performance is ignored until there is a problem. When a problem is discovered, developers must try to “tune” the software to meet performance objectives if, indeed, they can be met.

The key to preventing performance failures and the resulting project crises is to adopt a proactive approach to performance management that anticipates potential performance problems and includes techniques for identifying and responding to those problems early in the process. With a proactive approach, you avoid the project crises brought about by discovering performance problems late and produce software that meets performance objectives and is delivered on time and within budget.