I’ve been grappling with a tricky issue lately and thought I’d turn to this community for some insights. We all know how important performance is in software applications – a tiny hiccup can have a major impact on user experience. But despite the best development practices, I keep finding myself wondering: how can we really nail down the identification of performance regressions?

It almost feels like trying to catch smoke with our bare hands. We push out updates, add new features, and sometimes it’s not until users start complaining that we realize something has gone awry. I’m sure many of you have been in similar situations, where performance degradation sneaks in and derails everything we’ve worked on.

So, I’m really curious about the strategies or methodologies that you all have found effective in catching these performance issues early on, ideally during the development and testing phases. What tools or practices do you use to keep an eye on performance metrics? Are there certain benchmarks you set or performance tests you run during builds?

I’ve heard mentions of automated performance tests, but I wonder how often they’re implemented in practice and whether they genuinely catch the issues we need to look out for. Do you implement them as part of your CI/CD pipeline, or are they more of an afterthought?

Also, how do you engage your whole team in the task of monitoring performance? Is it enough to just hand off responsibilities to a dedicated QA team, or should every developer be actively involved?

I’d love to hear any war stories or insights from your own experiences, especially if there are lessons learned from handling performance regressions. How do you ensure that the software we’re working so hard on doesn’t just function, but performs fabulously too? Let’s share some knowledge!