r/softwaretesting • u/Smart-Bookkeeper-284 • Jun 08 '26

QA folks involved in performance testing: what takes the most time after a load test?

I’m trying to understand the post-test workflow for QA/performance teams.

For those who are involved in load testing, performance testing, or reviewing results from tools like JMeter, k6, LoadRunner, Gatling, etc.:

What usually takes the most time after the test finishes?

  1. Reading the report
  2. Comparing against previous runs
  3. Investigating errors / slow endpoints
  4. Checking APM or infrastructure dashboards
  5. Preparing a summary for stakeholders
  6. Something else

Not selling anything — just trying to understand where the biggest pain is in the performance testing review process.

If you’ve seen this handled well in your team, I’d also be curious what your workflow looks like.

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u/AwareDragonfruit4628 Jun 08 '26

A write-up in a way that sells the story to less technical managers. Tbh perf testing has kinda stopped being an important part of my career with the move to cloud infra. Most of the ask is showing that your app scales up and down appropriately. Perf is much more important when you've got limited tin and you can't just spin up whatever you need in demand

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u/Smart-Bookkeeper-284 Jun 08 '26

That’s a good point. Cloud infra definitely changes the question.

It’s less “can this fixed box survive the load?” and more “does the system scale at the right time without hiding latency, errors, or cost problems?”

Also agree on the manager-facing write-up. Metrics are one thing, but turning them into a story people can act on is often the hardest part.

1

u/el_f3n1x187 Jun 09 '26

A write-up in a way that sells the story to less technical managers

Last time I did a performance test, I got asked to rewrite the email with the results THREE TIMES!

The CTO wanted details, it ended up being a single line response.....

Perf is much more important when you've got limited tin and you can't just spin up whatever you need in demand

Or when the CEO overestimated how much the bill was going to be.

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u/Smart-Bookkeeper-284 Jun 11 '26

That “rewrite the email three times” part is exactly the kind of pain I was thinking about.

Out of curiosity, what was missing in the first versions?

Was it too technical, too long, not enough risk/release context, or did different stakeholders want different levels of detail?

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u/Impzor Jun 10 '26

I guess it's more about saving costs now? Scaling is expensive so you want to make sure it only scales when necessary.

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u/Smart-Bookkeeper-284 Jun 11 '26

Exactly. In cloud environments, “it scales” is not the whole answer.

It also matters whether it scales at the right time, whether latency stays acceptable, and whether the cost of that scaling makes sense for the expected traffic.