Our Approach 

Drawing on our rich experience, and acknowledging the different styles of project management used by clients, BGA have adopted an agile, flexible approach to projects. Because every project is different, we treat each individually. This approach is straightforward, minimising paperwork and meetings while focusing on business results and accountability.

The methology also provides practical metrics for measuring performance and quality. This allows BGA to anticipate problems and implement corrective action early when it costs the least.

Stress & Performance Testing

Our methodology has been developed over several years of real-world stress testing in high-volume, high-availability critical environments (large financial switches). We have created a framework within which we are able to:

1. Customise the test to match the specific goals of the project. Examples of these goals include determining upper bands for system performance, the impact of changes, similated sustained high volumes and platform/version comparison.
2. Profiling target systems to ensure that a representative test suite can be designed. This includes paying attention to concurrency (for example, number of connected devices, in-flight ‘hung’ transactions due to slow responses), transaction paths, functional significance and timing.
3. Specifically for S1 (previously Postilion) systems we have a deep understanding of the internal functioning of the system and can select exactly the right information to measure the performance of the system.

Finally, selection of the right tools is critical. Software such as Asset and FastTest are most commonly used to inject transactions. Instrumentation on the system must be able to provide instantaneous information about all performance metrics. Tools such as Prognosis, Windows WMI performance counters and database interrogation are used.