Keith Yorkston - Performance Testing: An ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level Specialist Certification Review

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Modern information technology is amazing, and the rate of change in the digital world is phenomenal. The benefits from humankinds technology-based ingenuity have the ability to improve life for all the residents of Earth and drive further exploration of our solar system. However, the lack of quality still blights the use of our digital inventions and often results in technology not behaving the way we want it to.

The quality challenges associated with making technology better require improved approaches to moving quality earlier and throughout the development and operations lifecycle. Some elements of early quality feedback, such as functional testing, are well understood and readily addressable by in-house and vendor-supplied teams. However, other aspects of quality are harder to address, and one of the biggest quality challenges that remains is ensuring the performance of technology is sufficient to meet our needs.

This book focuses on the thorny challenge of performance testing. It is based on a review of the standards that underpin best practice performance testing and combines it with Keiths extensive experience in practicing and teaching performance testing. This combination of theory, practice, and making performance testing understandable makes this book an important addition to the corpus of IT quality and testing literature. Keith has provided some great real-world examples, just the right number of jokes, and uses the recurring theme of Sherlock Holmes to emphasize the investigative nature of performance testing.

I met Keith for the first time in February 2006 as part of a two-week induction training course for a specialist testing consultancy called Cresta. The course was based in Durban, South Africa, and on day one, I found myself in a cramped, hot, and slightly fusty room with about a dozen nervous but expectant strangers waiting to see what we had signed up for. Any concerns about the challenges to be faced were soon dispelled, when Keith was introduced as one of the main trainers. It was obvious from the outset that Keith excels at three things: in-depth technical expertise, exceptional training capabilities, and livening up a room. By the end of the course, everyone had learned a lot, gelled as a team, and found a new friend called Keith.

Keith has trained thousands of people in a wide variety of subjects, but his real passion is for performance testing. He understands both the art and the science of performance testing and has enabled me, and many others, to build a performance testing career on the solid foundations he has provided. This book represents a lasting legacy that will enable others to benefit from Keiths ability to inform and entertain.