Role playbook · 03 / 05

Performance Tester

Plan · Load · Analyze

Mission: prove the system meets its performance SLAs under realistic and extreme load — and catch degradation before users do. Thresholds live in qa.config.yml and run as CI gates.

ISTQB home turf: CT-PT — workload modeling · load / stress / spike / soak · threshold-based gates
6 commands in your kit plan before you script thresholds = CI gates

The core loop

Plan first, then load it four ways.

Run per release, or per high-risk area. The plan defines what "fast enough" means; each perf-test then enforces those thresholds as pass/fail gates.

performance tester — per release
> /qa:perf-plan checkout             # 1 · ALWAYS plan first: objectives, SLAs, operational profile, workload
> /qa:perf-test /api/orders load     # 2 · baseline at expected traffic — thresholds from gates
> /qa:perf-test /api/orders stress   # 3 · find the breaking point
> /qa:perf-test /api/orders spike    # 4 · survive the flash-sale / campaign burst
> /qa:perf-test checkout soak        # 5 · hours-long: leaks, degradation, resource exhaustion
> /qa:dynamic-analysis checkout      # 6 · if soak degrades: memory / handle / connection leak analysis
Never script before planning. perf-test without a perf-plan tests a number, not a requirement.Performance rule №1

Beyond load

The rest of the non-functional picture.

QuestionReach for
Reliability / availability / failover/qa:nonfunctional reliability
Production performance & canary analysis/qa:shift-right "checkout journey"
Perf gates in the pipelinethresholds live in qa.config.yml gates:/qa:scaffold wires them into CI
Results for the release decisionyour threshold results feed /qa:go-no-go and /qa:release-report

Your cadence

When to run what.

Per release

perf-test load — re-baseline the release candidate vs last release

Before high-traffic events

perf-test spike + stress on the affected journeys

Quarterly

perf-test soakdynamic-analysis on the core flow

Where your work goes

Hand-offs.

Hands off →
Test Leader / Test Manager — your threshold pass/fail and capacity-headroom numbers feed /qa:go-no-go and /qa:quality-report.

Cheat sheet

One line per situation.

You need to…Run
Define SLAs & workload first/qa:perf-plan <scope>
Run load / stress / spike / soak/qa:perf-test <target> <type>
Investigate leaks / degradation/qa:dynamic-analysis <flow>
Check reliability / failover/qa:nonfunctional reliability
Monitor performance in production/qa:shift-right <journey>

Switch hats

The other four roles.

You can be all five — switch playbooks as the day demands. See how the roles interlock on the release-lifecycle timeline.