Effective Performance Engineering

Chapter 1. Getting Started

How do we get started with Effective Performance Engineering?

Let’s start by defining it. When speaking with different individuals and organizations, we’ve found the definition of “Effective Performance Engineering” or “Performance Engineering” varies greatly, so we wanted to define it upfront.

Performance Engineering represents a cultural shift in the way organizations view their essential processes. It embraces practices and capabilities that build quality and performance throughout an organization. This enables organizations to increase revenue, customer attraction and retention, brand value, and competitive advantage—all while focusing on meeting and exceeding the expectations of their end users.

Let’s go back to see where performance was first introduced in the modern computer era in technology history: when the Z1 was created by German Konrad Zuse in his parents’ living room between 1936 and 1938. The Z1 is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, and the first really functional modern computer. This marked the start of “Performance Engineering” for hardware and software related to the modern computer, some nearly 80 years ago.

Prior to the first functional modern computer, there are many examples of other performance-related topics associated with crops, livestock, medicine, mechanics, and plenty more. As with anything the challenge remains similar, but the practices and capabilities change. Many of these practices ...