Web Performance Warrior

Web Performance Warrior

by Andy Still
Released February 2015
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781491919613

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Book description

If you're aware of the need for faster, more responsive web applications, you can become a warrior who marshals the rest of your organization—including development, testing, marketing, and management—to create a workable plan to improve performance. This report shows you how.

Written by a consultant with long experience improving application performance for various organizations, Web Performance Warrior takes you step by step through the process of identifying performance needs, getting buy-in from key stakeholders, signing up staff to do the job, and putting the tools and procedures in place for a performance-aware organization.

This report concentrates on practical interventions, with specific tasks and pointers to the people in your organization who can implement them. It’s organized into six phases, including acceptance, promotion, strategy, engage, intelligence, and persistence, with an action plan for each.

Table of contents

  1. Foreword
  2. Preface
  3. 1. Phase 1: Acceptance “Performance Doesn’t Come For Free”
    1. Convincing Others
      1. Developer Objections
      2. Business Objections
    2. Action Plan
      1. Separate Performance Validation, Improvement, and Optimization from Standard Development
      2. Complete a Performance Maturity Assessment
      3. Define a Strategy and Roadmap to Good Performance
  4. 2. Phase 2: Promotion “Performance is a First-Class Citizen”
    1. Is Performance Really a First-Class Citizen?
      1. People
      2. Process
      3. Tooling
    2. Action Plan
      1. Make Performance Part of the Conversation
      2. Set Performance Targets
      3. Treat Performance Issues with the Same Importance and Severity as Functional Issues
      4. Assign Someone with Responsibility for Performance Within the Project
      5. Give People What They Need To Get Expertise
      6. Create a Culture of Performance
  5. 3. Phase 3: Strategy “What Do You Mean by ‘Good Performance'?”
    1. Three Levels of the Performance Landscape
      1. Performance Vision
      2. Performance Targets
      3. Performance Acceptance Criteria
    2. Tips for Setting Performance Targets
      1. Solve Business Problems, Not Technical Challenges
      2. Think Beyond Page Load Time
      3. Beware Over-optimization
    3. Action Plan
      1. Create Your Performance Vision
      2. Set Your Performance Targets
      3. Create Regular Reports on KPIs
      4. Revise Your User Story Gathering/Specification Process to Include Performance Acceptance Criteria
      5. Re-evaluate Your “Definition of Done” to Include Performance Acceptance Criteria
  6. 4. Phase 4 : Engage “Test...Test Early…Test Often...”
    1. Challenges of Performance Testing
      1. Tooling
      2. Environments
      3. User Journeys
      4. Load Model
      5. Types of Tests
      6. Iterative Improvements to Performance Testing
    2. Test Early
      1. Alternative Methods of Early Performance Testing
      2. Performance Engineers Still Need Space for Analysis
    3. Test Often
      1. Adding Performance to a Continuous Integration Process
    4. Action Plan
      1. Start Performance Testing
      2. Standardize Your Approach to Performance Testing
      3. Consider Performance Testing at Project Inception
      4. Integrate with Your CI Process
  7. 5. Phase 5 : Intelligence “Collect Data and Reduce Guesswork”
    1. Types of Instrumentation
      1. Browser Tools
      2. Server Tools
      3. Code Profilers
      4. Application Performance Management (APM)
    2. Action Plan
      1. Start Looking Under the Hood During Development
      2. Include Additional Data Gathering as Part of Performance Testing
      3. Install an APM Solution
  8. 6. Phase 6: Persistence “Go Live Is the Start of Optimization”
    1. Becoming a PerfOps Engineer
      1. The PerfOps Engineer’s Toolbox
    2. The PerfOps Center
    3. Closing the PerfOps Loop to Development
    4. Action Plan
      1. Put Proactive Monitoring in Place
      2. Carry Out Proactive Performance Analysis
      3. Close the Gap Between Production and Development
      4. Create a Dedicated PerfOps Center
  9. Velocity Ad

Product information

  • Title: Web Performance Warrior
  • Author(s): Andy Still
  • Release date: February 2015
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781491919613