About

At Practical Performance Analyst we keep asking ourselves the question, “Why do projects all over the world keep re-inventing the wheel time and again ?”. Pick any large IT project you’ve worked on and the challenges will inevitably remain the same. It generally starts as follows:

• Lack of proper Performance Engineering capability on the program
• Which then moves onto poorly define Non Functional Requirements
• Eventually leads to lack of understanding of current and projected business volumes
• Complications then arise from lack of funding to invest in proper tools
• Further complications arise from half baked Capacity Plans submitted to the infrastructure architects
• Complicating things further is the lack of strong design and architecture skills which factors in the design patterns for Non Function attributes
• The final straw that breaks the camels back is probably poorly executed Performance tests
• Eventually it’s time to go live and no one really understands Performance Modeling or Capacity Management
• Systems go pear shaped in production, Performance Gurus are called onto the scene and a war room is established to address performance defects and save the program from disaster
• The story remains the same, what changes is the client, location, geography and time.

Through the BoK (Body Of Knowledge) here at Practical Performance Analyst we intend to provide you the relevant information and help you make the right decisions so that you can hopefully design, architecture, build and deliver a system that meets the required Non Functional Requirements. Working together with yourself we are confident that we will be able to influence the way the rest of the world thinks about performance to a great extent. Part of our initiatives at the Practical Performance Analyst is to put together standards and lay down the processes that organizations and individuals around the world can leverage. These processes and standards will form part of the Open Framework for Performance Engineering across the Software Development Life Cycle.

Now, of-course this ain’t rocket science and you can get all of this by reading Dr. Connie Smith’s book or from numerous other research papers at CMG (www.cmg.org) but we know you are are busy lot and as most Performance Engineers googling their way to solutions to performance issues we thought it best to lay down an easy to understand Open Framework that would benefit generations to come.

Listed on this page are the various initiatives that we have put together here at Practical Performance Analyst with the intention of helping building a stronger foundation for SPE (Systems Performance Engineering) at every IT organization around the world.

• SPE Articles – Articles on your areas of interest, How-to’s, Tool Reviews and Case studies and experiences related to Systems Performance Engineering across the Development Life Cycle. Includes articles on Performance Modelling, Performance Testing, Performance Monitoring, APM, Capacity Planning, Capacity Management, Performance Tuning and Application Diagnostics.
• SPE Training Courses – Educational content to help professionals and organizations build capability in Systems Performance Engineering
• SPE Fundamentals – SPE Fundamentals at Practical Performance Analyst covers the basic concepts of Systems Performance Engineering across the Software Development Life Cycle. Here you will find definitions of the various Systems Performance Engineering activities including an introduction to some of the important concepts for each of those activities.
• SPE Tools – SPE Tools provides a listing of the various relevant tools that we have seen used across the Industry. You will find listing of tools for both SaaS and On-premise use. This is not at attempt to rank all the SPE tools on the planet but rather some of the most commonly used SaaS and On-premise SPE tools across the industry.
• SPE Advocacy – At this section you will find a list of resources to help you with advocacy of Systems Performance Engineering (SPE) and Proactive Performance Management (PPM) processes across the organization.
• SPE Point Of View – Point of View will present current industry analysis on various different paradigms that are important to professionals with interests in Systems Performance Engineering. These are paradigms and concepts that are important to us professionals with interests in Systems Performance. Point Of View or PoV intends to provide an unbiased view of the various industry paradigms where we will ask ourselves the relevant questions and seek to understand the lay of the land from a Performance Architect / Performance Engineers standpoint
• SPE HowTo’s – SPE HowTos is an initiative that focuses on providing simple, easy to follow instructions on various common Systems Performance Engineering related activities across the SDLC. The SPE HowTos section is modeled after the famous open source Linux HowTos which we all grew up with over the last couple of decades.
• SPE BoK – Open Framework for Systems Performance Engineering. Provides a comprehensive view of the processes, roles, responsibilities and outcomes related to Systems Performance Engineering.
• SPE Industry Benchmarks – SPE Industry Benchmarks provides a view of the various relevant Benchmarks avaialable out there, when to use a given type of benchmark, what to keep in mind when using a benchmark and how you might consider applying them to a given in a given scenario.
• SPE Conferences – SPE Conferences provides a view of all the relevant major SPE conferences held around the world.
• SPE Benchmarks - SPE Benchmarks provides a view of the relevant industry benchmarks that Systems Performance Engineers and Architects refer to from time to time when performing paper based analysis of vendor systems or software.
• SPE Reads - SPE Reads provides a list of relevant SPE related books across the various disciplines of Systems Performance Engineering.

We sincerely hope that with your support we will be able to continue our mission and invest in building the capability and open knowledgebase that can be made available to everyone out there.

It’s a long journey and as they say every long journey starts with a small step. So here we go. We strongly believe that working together as a community we can bring about change and impact people’s lives in a positive manner.

Drop us a line, we need your support.

Disclaimer – The content at Practical Performance Analyst is based on collective experiences of all the individuals involved. The authors on this website do not in any way represent their organizations. The opinions expressed at the Practical Performance Analyst are purely the view of the author’s involved and do not have any relevance to the organizations they work for. Practical Performance Analyst and it’s authors do not take responsibility for any damage that you might cause using the information documented here.

Trevor Warren is passionate about challenging the status-quo and finding reasons to innovate. Over the past 16 years he has been delivering complex systems, has worked with very large clients across the world and constantly is looking for opportunities to bring about change. Trevor constantly strives to combine his passion for delivering outcomes with his ability to build long lasting professional relationships. You can learn more about the work he does at LinkedIn. You can download a copy of his CV at VisualCV. Visit the Github page for details of the projects he’s been hacking with.