Our product has earned a poor reputation in terms of performance. Well, this is a great corporate application, 13 years old, which needs refreshment and, in particular, improving its performance.
We decided to solve this problem strategically in this version. We are evaluating several options for how to do this.
We have experienced load testing engineers equipped with the best tools on the market, but they usually get a stable release at the end of the development life cycle of the version, so in the latest versions the developers did not have enough time to fix all their conclusions. (Yes, I know that we need to deliver earlier stable versions, we are also working on this process, but this is not in my area)
One of the directions that I click is to create a lab environment installed with a nightly build, so developers can test the impact of their code on performance. I would like this environment to be constantly loaded with scripts that mimic the real user interface. In this loaded environment, each developer will have to write a specific script that checks his code (i.e., single-user experience in a real environment). I would like to create a report that shows the effect of each iteration on existing functions, as well as the performance of new functions.
I'm a little worried that I'm too high and it will become too complicated.
What do you think of such an idea? Does anyone have experience creating such an environment? Can you share your experience?