Synthetic Monitoring
Performance monitoring is a lot like having an ever-present code proofreader who keeps looking over your company’s website and application code for performance issues on a never-ending basis. Programmers and writers have a lot in common when it comes to editing their work: generally, they do a great job of catching major errors that break content but can become blind to more efficient ways of expressing the same ideas and functions because of their familiarity with the work during the writing process. Both programmers and writers rely on human and mechanical editors, but performance monitoring gives programmers an edge on editing their work in order to do jobs more efficiently than before.
Agile Programs are Living Documents
Unlike a publication in a magazine or a newspaper, websites and applications that utilize the agile software development process are more similar to what is called a ‘living document’. Living documents can be changed as time goes on and, more importantly, they require editing with every revision. When a writer adds new content to a living document, they need to make sure that they’re not repeating already existing content within the work or replacing a clearly explained text with one harder to understand. Therefore, agile development needs agile monitoring.
Performance Monitoring “Proofreads” Every Change
While it’s difficult for a program to interpret linguistics to the point where it can advise the writer with more efficient ways to word content, programs have the advantage of being able to quantify how long it takes to complete a given task. Performance monitoring is able to compare how long it takes for an application to complete a given task before and after developers make any changes; the system behaves like a health monitor for your company’s websites and applications. If properly configured, the performance monitoring application can be triggered to send out an alert if it notices a change in the time it takes for tasks to complete so that developers can pinpoint the mistake. The more efficient the code, the less server infrastructure power is needed for hosting.
Tighter Deadlines and Human Inefficiency
Performance monitoring takes an active role in the QA process, which helps teams move faster and more efficiently. Agile programming can push development teams to issue updates under tighter deadlines which often comes at the expense of less debugging time. Additionally, even the best human QA won’t be able to gauge large-scale code efficiency as well as a program that can simulate the process. Performance monitoring also identifies efficiency problems quickly with a released code, so your company’s developers can limit a bad code’s impact.
If your business is looking to give its website and application customers a faster user experience while saving on unnecessary extra hosting power, the experts at Apica are ready to help with your performance monitoring needs. Contact us today!