how-to-investigate-performance.mo

Owner: Xavier Lefevre

Why

• You don't know from which end investigate the performance issue. Follow those steps to make sure you know how to investigate in an efficient way. Also in a way that you'll be able to share and explain your learnings easily with others.

Steps

• Define the context of the problem, and how to reproduce it

  • Ex: We want a performing player ranking query from a 3G network

• Check the performance tools and technics before anything

• Make sure you note every steps of your investigation, take screenshots and draw schemas

  • Ex: I requested the ranking route from Postman with the ID of a user => I changed the network in order to see the impact of bad internet on the request time => etc.

• Start from the main broad problem, take screenshots and note your exact findings

  • Ex: The request takes 12,235s on an iPhone 4S on 3G network

• Cut your problem in pieces as soon as you start going into details, and continue noting

  • Ex: The ranking request fetches data from the portfolio API in 10,123s and the user API in 1,856s

• Make hypotheses: from 10,123s, you expect with your fix to reach below 1s because of a potential SQL query mis-performance

• Fix it, and then compare the result with your initial state

  • If the issue is not fixed, write down that your hypotheses is invalid, it still is a learning and worth sharing

• Update your product owner and team mates: by saving and sharing your final report, like in a Gist or Trello Ticket

• Iterate...

• Finally share what you learned with your team to be challenged and move forward!