A study conducted by Shunra revealed a stark difference between what application testers believe is important to achieve optimal application performance and what they are actually doing to achieve peak performance.

Of the 246 application testing professionals surveyed, 64 percent responded that “Adding performance testing very early in the software development lifecycle” to be either “Most or Very Important” in developing a performance-minded culture. However, only 30 percent actually performance test “early and often throughout the development lifecycle” and 60 percent stated that their company is not more than halfway to achieving a performance-minded culture.

“This data demonstrates the challenges performance engineers face when trying to implement a culture of performance,” stated Bill Varga, Shunra COO. “It is not an easy task given the complexity of mobile, Cloud and composite applications, and the institutional barriers that must be overcome. The fact that DevOps ranked second in importance for developing a performance-minded culture shows that it takes whole organizations, not individuals or single silos, to achieve the economic benefits of engineering in performance across the software development lifecycle.”

The study also revealed a lack of priority for measuring the financial impact of post-production failures. This ranked as the second least important factor in developing a performance-minded culture. Only 28 percent ranked it “Most or Very Important.”

“This was very surprising given that 80 percent of the total cost of an application is a result of performance remediation efforts post deployment,” said Varga. “Performance engineers are advocating for greater performance as they see how poor performance affects back-office costs. We expect executives to be involved in a top-down performance push as the deep front-office financial impact of poor performance on revenue, productivity, brand reputation, and customer retention becomes more apparent.”

Other key findings from the study include:

- 57 percent allocate budget for designing applications for performance prior to deployment.

- Analytical skills rated as the most important trait of effective performance engineers.

- 5 percent still primarily rely on end users for performance testing.