A few weeks ago, I reviewed The Hitchhiking Guide To Load Testing Projects: A Fun, Step-by-Step Walk-Through Guide by Leandro Melendez. It is good to see more books on the performance testing/engineering genre recently. One of my favorite books is The Art of Application Performance Testing series by Ian Molyneaux. On this line, James Pulley’s book is different, it is completely a non-technical book in performance testing/engineering genre. In this review, I am going to share my views about the book, and please note that I have not been compensated to write a review about the book; it is my honest and unbiased review.
This book is the second release from PerfBytes publications, available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited to borrow or to purchase for $9.99 USD.
Table of Contents
Target Audience
From the book title, it seems that this book is for technical recruiters or test/engineering managers or those who hire performance test professionals. But this book is for everyone who is in the performance testing field and those who want to get into the performance testing arena.
Book Structure
The book has 112 pages which you can complete by reading it within a couple of hours tops. It consists of five chapters:
- Who is this for?
- Who do you need?
- The Performance Test
- Foundations
- Challenges
I am just touching base on the important topic which the author presented. I am not deep-diving into any of it.
The first chapter is dedicated to the target audience, as I mentioned before. The author outlines the cost of hiring bad performance personnel, which is paramount for running successful projects by backing up a use case. This chapter is a prelude to the upcoming chapters.
The second chapter discusses three performance roles. I call it Performance TEA roles:
- Performance Tester
- Performance Engineer
- Performance Architect
The author explains how to identify pure performance talent from the market. I agree with the author stating that most of the resumes are fradulent.
I have been part of recruiting and filtering out the resumes in my previous roles. If the resume is more than two pages, I am not fond of it. Most of the resumes I have seen are just copy and paste and exchange of technical jargon.
I also experienced voice and lips being out of sync in the interview, multiple reschedules of the interview, and more tricks.
The third chapter talks about the technical aspects of performance tests and more. It will be informative for those who are getting started in performance testing.
The fourth chapter is the core of this book for a couple of reasons. This is a lengthy chapter and talks about technical, interpersonal and business aspects.
The author inspires from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and plotted Value Dependencies in Performance Testing. This chapter deep-dives into performance testing, engineering, architect, and SRE roles and skills. Statistics, project management, researching, benchmarking, and more have been outlined in this chapter. Most of the tools and their features have been discussed.
In the final short chapter, you can learn about how to hire a smart performance talent, anti-patterns, meat puppet, and the conclusion
If you need any help in recruiting, PerfBytes team helps you to implement the process of hiring a performance talent. All you need is to contact them in an email.
Overall
Should I get this book for interview questions? My answers are yes and no. This book doesn’t list out the interview questions, but I want you to understand why it is not a good practice to refer publicly available interview contents, by reading this book. I am also not fond of any interview questions or certification dumps sites. You don’t see me in posting such questions, also I rarely ask technical questions in public forums. In my early days, I occasionally posted questions, but I gradually reduced them. You will learn more in this book about how to transform into a mature talent.
If you are getting started in a performance arena or an expert in the tools, result analysis, and solutions, or an engineering manager or product owner, this book will help you to bring value to your team and organization by implementing the best practices in hiring the best talents.
My final thought is: If you have been following James Pulley in the forums (LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Stack Overflow and more) for the past many years, where he is moderating, and reading his answers, you are almost done with this book. An average person knows about ~30000 words, but still needs a dictionary. So, I suggest you to get this book to get insights about hiring the right talent and bringing value to your company.
Happy Learning and Hiring!
NaveenKumar,
Thank you for your kind review.
It is very difficult to identify and hire skilled performance personnel, particularly for those organizations which do not already have skilled performance engineers or architects on staff to conduct interviews. It has been my goal with this book to provide insight to recruiters, interviewers, hiring managers and line managers on what attributes to seek out which are indicators of high value.
It is my hope that this information makes it easier for organizations to interview for core skills which they can evaluate effectively, reducing or eliminating the need to download lists of tool questions which the candidates have also likely been studying.
Best Regards,
James Pulley, PerfBytes