Time is the most precious resource that should be used wisely. So how do you manage your time? Like a slow website, we naturally feel offended when something is wasting our time.
When speed matters?
All our time is precious. Slow response times lead to wasted time and hinder productivity. So I'm not too fond of these growling IT services; it always feels poorly designed and of low value.
When services are slow, we see
decline in sales
frustrated customers
reduced engagement rates
increase in service costs
Forward-Thinking organizations have realized that software performance and reliability are core quality criteria.
When speed doesn't matter?
Simon Sinek said, "The only time when speed does not matter is when you're headed in the wrong direction."
I like this quote because it tells the whole truth about speed. But, unfortunately, you can go in the wrong direction if you are on a performance optimization mission.
Speed is your most precious good when you are in a competitive market, such as e-commerce or finance, and you sell your products online. Unfortunately, every millisecond can hurt your business, creating a low-quality image and making your customers feel unappreciated.
How to avoid speed-related issues?
Keep three rules in mind
Proactivity
Quality
Continuous
Be proactive when you build responsive business applications. It would be best if you did not hope the performance will be acceptable on a more robust infrastructure. Instead, craft performance requirements and lay out how your teams validate them for every change as early as possible.
Focus on quality when designing, implementing, and validating new or changed systems. Performance is nothing you can add as a component. You might notice performance only when it's not there, which means when your applications are in use by customers.
Make performance a continuous effort throughout your entire value stream. Performance requires permanent care. A long list of factors, such as volume changes, usage, infrastructure, configuration, and software, could impact response times and reliability. The earlier you detect and solve your degradations, the better.
Happy Performance Engineering! Keep up the great work!