posted 01-07-2003 10:26 AM         

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Suswaram Radha

posted 01-07-2003 10:38 AM         

This I find is the single most important trait for somebody in performance testing.
Interestingly enough, all the sucessful Performance engineers/testers I have talked to or read messages from all seem to have this trait.

On top of being a jack of all trades, communication skills and a keen insight in what motivates the different parties you are dealing with on a daily basis (Development, business client, management etc.) are essential for the job.

I would even go sofar to state that if you miss any of the above mentioned skills in your team, you will not be sucessful in brokering changes for the better in your organization. (now come and shoot me )

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Roland

posted 01-07-2003 10:54 AM         

Sr. Performance Tester
- Tool Guru (multiple tools prefered)
- Excellent workload modelling skills
- Excellent Verbal and Written communications
- Solid understanding of how various n-tier environments "work" (specifically how they communicate)
- Excellent understanding of (relevant) communication protocols
- Good understanding of Operating Systems, Networks, hardware and common Performance related issues.
- Able to work independantly for a variety of "bosses" concurrently who may have different agendas
- Excellent ability to report results graphically and verbally
- Solid ability to analyze results and find bottlenecks
- Solid ability to create "ad-hoc" tests to exploit areas of suspect performance
- Solid knowlege of Performance Engineering Methodology

Sr. Performance Engineer
- Tool Guru (multiple tools prefered)
- Excellent workload modelling skills
- Excellent Verbal and Written communications
- Excellent understanding of how various n-tier environments "work" (specifically how they communicate)
- Excellent understanding of (relevant) communication protocols
- Excellent understanding of Operating Systems, Networks, hardware and common Performance related issues.
- Able to work independantly for a variety of "bosses" concurrently who may have different agendas
- Excellent ability to report results graphically and verbally
- Excellent ability to create "ad-hoc" tests to exploit areas of suspect performance
- Excellent knowlege of Performance Engineering Methodology
- Excellent ability to analyze results and find bottlenecks
- Excellent ability to work alongside developers/admins/architects to collaborively tune systems.

The difference really is that the Tester is not generally asked to to participate in iterative tuning. The Tester designs and builds tests, analyzes them to a reasonable level of detail and then waits to be asked to re-test. The Engineer is an active participant in the tuning process.

posted 01-07-2003 01:09 PM         

quote:

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Originally posted by RSBarber:
Should this be linked to in the FAQ?

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posted 02-10-2003 05:17 AM         

quote:

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Posted by Punekar

To be a Performance Analyst you must :
*Know queuing theory well.
*Have a good understanding of mathematics.
*Be conversant with statistics too.
*Programming skills needed. A background in software testing prepares you mentally.
*Be good at deriving useful information from a deluge of test results.

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