How strong is your app? How do you measure your app’s performance against your initial testing plan? What insights do you have into how end users are experiencing your app?
These questions are important to answer in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. Testers need a means of quantifying their app’s quality to ensure it is as strong as possible so that they don’t get left behind.
This is where software testing KPIs come in.
Software testing KPIs are a critical component of any successful application testing pipeline. In this blog, we will cover the importance of software testing KPIs and outline the top software testing KPIs for measuring application quality—helping your team create and quantify high-performing applications that succeed with end users.
Related Reading: The Impact of Continuous Testing: How Organizations Transform Their Testing from Reactive to Innovative
What Are Software Testing KPIs?
Software testing KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are metrics that determine whether a software application is performing as desired and achieving the targets defined in the planning stages of its life cycle.
Why Are Software Testing KPIs Important?
Software testing KPIs are crucial to testing teams because they provide the data needed to evaluate the effectiveness of your application. Software testing KPIs help determine areas for improvement and help to ensure the overall quality of your application before and after it is released on the market.
The following are some of the main reasons why software testing KPIs are a critical component for any software testing team hoping to achieve peak performance:
- Helps teams identify testing bottlenecks and can help determine the overall health of an application so you know where improvements are needed.
- Enables teams to determine the scalability of an application. For example, when testing a financial services application, software testing KPIs can help determine whether the app can handle increased end users, higher traffic volume, or more banking transactions.
- Aids in prioritizing and strategizing when forming their testing plan.
- Identifies the baseline load that an application can handle.
- Illuminates the baseline network usage and memory that an application utilizes.
- Analyzes third-party systems that integrate with the application.
- Ensures that an application is operating within budget.
- In performance testing, software testing KPIs establish benchmarks that define acceptable response times, throughput, and resource utilization. These benchmarks serve as a reference point for evaluating the system's efficiency.
- Detects errors early in the software development life cycle, enabling proactive measures to be implemented before the issues impact end users.
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Key Software Testing KPIs To Track
Tracking software KPIs provides a baseline blueprint for teams to ensure that they are creating functional, efficient, and user-friendly applications. Software testing KPIs are one of the most critical components of the software testing process, as they reflect back to testing teams the information needed to succeed.
The following are some key software testing KPIs to track to measure app quality:
Test Coverage
Test coverage is a software testing KPI that measures how much code is covered by tests to help determine how thorough the tests are. Complete test coverage is necessary to ensure all functionalities of an application are tested properly.
Related Reading: Test Coverage Guide
Download this reference guide to determine the devices, browsers, and operating systems that your team should be executing tests against.
Defect Density
Another crucial software testing KPI for testing teams to consider is defect density. Defect density is the number of defects identified in a specific test. A higher defect density can indicate a bug in the code or other incomplete testing processes that must be addressed before proceeding.
Test Case Effectiveness
Test case effectiveness is a software testing KPI that evaluates the percentage of test cases that identify defects. This metric helps testing teams determine the quality of their test cases, so they can adjust as needed.
Automation ROI
Automation ROI measures the effectiveness of automation (as opposed to manual testing) within an application or test case. Automation ROI may include factors such as time saved, reduction of cost, improved test coverage, and more—all of which can be enhanced through increased automation. Tracking automation ROI helps testers track the cost benefit of their investment in automation.
Response Time
Response time helps teams measure how long it takes for an application to respond to a specific request. Knowing this measurement ensures that an app will be responsive to its users, which is one of the most critical aspects of creating a successful application and retaining user loyalty.
CPU Utilization
CPU utilization is a software testing KPI that measures the percentage of CPU capacity utilized while processing a test’s requests.
Memory Utilization
Memory utilization measures the amount of memory that is being used by a system or application to perform a test and the ratio when compared to the total memory available.
Latency Time
Latency describes the amount of time it takes for an application to respond to an end user’s request. Network latency is a related term that describes a delay with the network’s bandwidth or response time specifically.
User Capacity
User capacity refers to the number of users that can successfully utilize an application without errors or lag time kicking in. It is important for teams to avoid slowdowns or crashes—including during peak traffic events—as even a brief delay can turn off users from your application.
Transaction Pass/Fail
When an end user makes a transaction on your application, be that inputting payment information, logging into their account, or adding items to a shopping cart, it is critical that these transactions work. If the user experiences an error message, they are likely to lose trust in your organization. Transaction pass/fail is a software testing KPI that returns a simple pass/fail response to determine if the app is functioning as intended.
Related Viewing: Test Ahead of the Curve: Insights for Developing a Superior Test Coverage
Bottom Line
An effective testing plan and testing strategy are essential for ensuring the quality and reliability of applications. By tracking these software testing KPIs, testing teams gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their testing processes and can then make the best decisions to improve app quality.
When you partner with Perfecto for your software testing KPIs and more, you will enjoy a seamless experience with world-class results.
When you test your apps with Perfecto, you will experience:
- Unified testing
- Advanced automation.
- Full toolchain integration.
- All results in one place.
- Accelerated KPI testing.
- Shift Testing Left.
- And more!
Experience complete continuous testing for yourself by signing up for a free 14-day trial of Perfecto today.
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