I just stumbled across another LinkedIn discussion where a group of offshore testers were trying to explain to each other the difference between “throughput” and “response time”. Their explanations and counter explanations run to several pages. I scanned through the names and (offshore) companies involved and I’m glad that none of them are on my payroll. 🙂
It reminded me of the article that I wrote in December for the Trust IV blog recently. “Caveat emptor when selecting an offshore partner”. I’ve attached a PDF transcript of the discussion for those of you don’t have the dubious honour of being a member of the “Performance Tuning Tips” group on LinkedIn.
Is it any wonder that businesses undervalue performance testing when it’s conducted by people who obtain all of their knowledge from LinkedIn and GoogleGroups?
Remarkably we would not expect this level of confusion from your local barber on the subject of cutting of hair, from an electrician on how to wire a house or from a physician on how to treat a condition, but IT management appears completely comfortable on many (most?) cases with this level of knowledge for performance testers as long as a price point is met.
Such questions from group participants result in immediate dismissals from the performance testing teams for organizations I have an affiliation with. You cannot reduce the risk in production by introducing risk in performance testing through the hiring of lesser skilled individuals.