Catchpoint this week expanded its open source WebPageTest performance testing suite of tools to enable IT teams to run instant tests that surface suggestions for improving overall web application and site performance.
In addition, Catchpoint is now providing support for private tests, bulk tests and priority testing capabilities within the WebPageTest tool suite.
Tim Kadlec, director of engineering for WebPageTest, said the goal is to make it easier for both developers and DevOps teams to experiment with how changes to applications and websites could improve performance using a capability that has now been added to the core suite.
Identifying opportunities to improve performance typically requires tediously constructing manual tests over a period of weeks, noted Kadlec. Much of that effort is experimental in the sense that no one knows for sure if the tests being constructed will have a material impact on performance.
The Opportunities and Experiments capability provides teams with a low-code tool for building tests based on a set of best practices that Catchpoint has defined. That approach makes it simpler to automatically generate and test tweaks that, for example, eliminate blocking scripts, optimize image rendering and minimize layout shifts. The result is optimization tests that show how their applications and websites could benefit from specific, actionable improvements without having to change any of the code that has already been deployed, said Kadlec.
That’s a critical capability because it will encourage a level of experimentation that previously IT teams shied away from, simply because the amount of effort required to achieve an uncertain outcome was too high.
It’s not precisely clear who is conducting these types of tests, as more responsibility for testing applications continues to shift left toward developers. The latest additions to WebPageTest make it easier for developers to conduct those tests without necessarily requiring help from a DevOps team, noted Kadlec.
While there has always been a tremendous amount of focus on web application and site performance, the attention level has risen across organizations in the digital business transformation era. Many of the processes being implemented via web applications are extremely latency-sensitive. As more of those applications become routinely tested, the overall level of application performance should steadily improve.
At the same time, the number of web applications and websites that most organizations are supporting also continues to expand. Most of those organizations are looking for ways to test applications without necessarily having to expand the size of the testing team or significantly increase the amount of time spent on testing.
Regardless of the approach, it is apparent that testing is becoming more automated. The goal is not so much to eliminate the need for dedicated testing teams, but reduce the number of rote tasks that contribute to test avoidance in the interest of saving time. In theory, the more tests run—and the earlier they are run—the fewer issues that DevOps teams will need to deal with later.