What is SLA in performance testing?

What is SLA in performance testing?

What is a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

It is an agreement between a service provider and a client that incorporates an explicit list of responsibilities, quality standards and services. This document covers penalties and problems for possible violations. Product information related to possible bottlenecks and performance levels is included. A specialized performance testing company can be of great value in developing SLAs that are in line with performance testing standards.

Following are the four key factors that determine the significance of SLAs in performance testing:

1. KPIs and Baseline Performance Metrics should be established: Those performance standards need to be defined in the SLA that are yet to be met. The KPIs and the right metrics need to be determined before initiating the process. In order to establish the current status by running performance tests, it would also be a wise move to use tools like Google Analytics to ascertain the market position.

2. SLAs should be well-defined: A popular performance testing tool can help in defining SLAs and also helps in monitoring and tracking them during the performance tests. The criteria can be chosen that needs to be measured, thresholds should be selected and the duration of the contract should be determined.

3. Integrate and automate in the DevOps pipeline: Procedures can be prescribed using a SLA and it can also act as a bridge to automation. DevOps methods need to be included in the SLA so that the testing in the CI pipeline can be made faster. A concise document will benefit the QA teams wherein a detailed analysis of the application’s state is mentioned. Client-service provider communication can be smoothened by SLAs and the process of enhancing the performance can be simplified.

4. The findings needs to be communicated: One of the important parts of DevOps is regular stakeholder meetings. The ongoing performance monitoring reports should be shared with the concerned teams so that everyone can be kept in the loop. The QA team needs the data so that relevant test scenarios can be created. The latest updates are required by developers to know which features needs to be adjusted.