How to Make Things Faster

Chapter 15. Method R

The performance improvement approach that I’ve been building through these stories I’ve been telling is actually a formal method with a name. It’s called Method R. The R stands for response time. It’s a response-time–oriented method because “My program takes too long to run” is a common way that you’ll see symptoms expressed. But Method R is also useful for optimizing throughput, which is a measure of how many executions you can complete in a given time interval.

You’ve seen enough by now that the complete method will be no surprise:

1. List the symptoms for which the business needs relief.

2. Sort the list into business-priority order.

3. For each symptom S in the sorted list:

4.       While further relief for S is your top priority:

5.                 Observe S (look at it!), ideally, in the act of misbehaving.

6.                 Find the cause C of the misbehavior.

7.                 Relieve S by curing C.

By now, I’ve pleaded my case for the importance of working on symptoms in business-priority order, and I’ve told a few stories about how to observe a symptom by looking at it. Not every problem is going to be as immediately evident as Nancy’s problem or the label-printer adventure in Orange County. Over the next several chapters, I’ll go into more detail about what you should be observing when your symptom is a slow computer program.