Developing Software including web applications can be an extremely demanding task in terms of both time and costs
Moreover, with the ever increasing difficulty in "making your presence felt" in the crowd, the job has become complicated like never before. This reality calls for using an effective tool to carry out the "follow up" of the whole process. Software Testing in case of web application may incorporate the checking of web servers, websites and intranet applications (with web interfaces) to make sure that these are competent enough on various grounds like "Functional", "Usability", "Compatibility", "Interface", "Performance" and lastly "Security". All these, once combined go into giving enough reasons for a successful application. The ultimate objective is to design a system that is backed by techniques which help in ensuring high throughput, low response duration and scripting time. This in turn is possible by, knowing in the narrowest manner, the pitfalls in the web application that are posing hurdles from realizing its maximum po tential.
KPIs with reference to Testing can be grouped in any number of categories, though the frequently used ones are- Financial Perspective, Customer Perspective, Internal Operations Perspective and Growth Perspective. In the context of Web Applications Testing, one can club the parameters under groups such as "Stress Testing", "Load Testing", "Structure Perspective" and "Quality Perspective". The specific measures to be followed are "number of memory leaks", "bandwidth" and "Transactional Problem Tolerance". Quality can be assessed via "number of virtual visitors who form part of the testing", "% increase number of users", "number of users who can be served on a concurrent basis". Stress Perspective can be gauged by "Scripting Capabilities", "Portability Index" and "number of built-in functions". Load Testing can be had from "throughput level", "Cut experienced in user response time" and "reduction in testing time".
The problematic areas that are mostly experienced in case of web servers pertain to the load it is required to serve. This can be corrected by carrying out a "Load Testing" to ensure that the navigation of visitors does not get hampered. Further, one should know the number of users who can be served efficiently. This will help in knowing the traffic that moves into the web application software, which in turn can be used for planning a gradual rise in the "number of visitors who can be served". Looking at the usability of load testing from the other side, not only does it help in raising the "count of controllable visitors" but also in knowing the upper limit which can be taken care of in an efficient manner. Accordingly, balanced statistics can be pre-set. Moving on the same lines, strategies can be designed.
The various aims can be attained by framing a BSC (Balanced Scorecard), which has relevant KPIs on it. This quantitative method assists in knowing the "magnitudinal situation" of the progress being made in the right direction.
Using indicators to dig out the problems that lie in the application code and identify the inventory needs can assist in knowing whether the scaling should be "vertical" (employing high-end servers) or "horizontal" (adding to the number of data servers and databases). It thereby provides a holistic view of the software testing tasks.