Modern applications are built on a microservices architecture that leverages cloud-native technologies. This architecture has many benefits regarding scalability and fault-tolerance of individual components, but it also increases the complexity of the applications, mostly due to the interdependencies between services. This complexity makes it difficult for engineers to fully understand how their applications will react to abnormal conditions, such as a dependency failure or performance degradation.

Organizations use load and performance testing to prevent issues from impacting customers, which is essential if they want to stay relevant in today’s digital-first world. And with the rise of cloud native technology and DevOps, software teams must shift performance testing left, towards development. However, traditional load and performance testing tools simply haven’t kept pace, leaving developers, operations, and QA teams siloed.

Load testing, which is as a type of non-functional testing that puts a structure or system under pressure and measures its response, might sound boring. In reality the entire process of planning, estimating, and implementing load tests against the system is like putting together pieces of a complex puzzle, and it can be a lot of fun.