Make performance testing part of continuous integration

“We think [performance testing] needs to be part of that continuous process,” said Ajit Sancheti , co-founder of Mu Dynamics, Inc. Today Mu Dynamics announced the integration of their Blitz cloud-based load test tool with Atlassian’s Bamboo, a Continuous Integration (CI) server. 

The trend of integrating ALM tools seems to be growing, as vendors are exposing their APIs or putting in appropriate hooks to allow for data to flow seamlessly between tools. This seems to be especially true in the area of DevOps as demand grows for a faster release process using automated tests and continuous integration. 

“When you look at how cloud and mobile applications are built, people are building the app, making changes 20 times a day,” says Sancheti. He believes that the simplicity in load testing with Blitz as well as the integrations with other tools has aided in its popularity.

The key for anything in the cloud is simplicity. If you start to impose complexity up front, people don’t adopt the solution. Even though we’ve stayed very, very simple, we don’t do the complex transactions, we see more and more people use it, because 80-90% of performance testing does not require the complexity.

Performance testing in the cloud continues to grow in popularity and does offer several benefits, including lowered capital and operational costs, and support for distributed development teams. Now, by integrating your load test into your CI solution, you can be sure with each build that any issues with performance are caught early, before your code hits production.