[Work] Dry Run 5

Dry Run - Also known as a user (onsite) stress test - Also known as a "shakedown".

Welcome to Dry Run 5. By now just skip the test I am damn stressed, and I am already pretty shaken all over. Revised launch date is 2 days away and it must work. No option for any failure or gremlins. We're supporting 400 plus concurrent users, but will simulate based on a 50 "requests per second" scenario.

This is the time when the PM and his entire team suddenly become meek, humble creatures. I'm pacing up and down, being the bothersome distraction I am.

Pic: 400 plus users to support baby!!

The team is dead tired after days and days of tuning architectures, testing hypothesises, performing stats diagnostics. And yet they chug along and are so dedicated to their craft - that those thousands of lines of code work seamlessly, somehow defining 'logic', queuing against or overriding each other, listening for events before actions are taken, a lurking subfunction simply dwelling till it is invoked ... and somehow these singular actions are strung to somehow make sense....

There's a nervous tension in the air. The room is filled with the crackling of keystrokes, papers being shuffled, and people talking. I stop pacing and gaze across the room. Hundreds of users hack at the keyboards furiously processing stacks of forms at the craziest of speeds.

I crack a few jokes to diffuse the tension and guilt. Even start practising a pose called the "ARRRGH what happened to the system?!" look. I think I am getting better at it as time goes by.

Pic: Take 42 -ARRRGH what happened to the system?! Beside me is "Superman" Peerapong.

And then the client side BA walks briskly through the rows of users and distributes a system performance evaluation form - I am reminded of warfare back in the 18th century or so where the flagbearer would run in front of the army before the battle begun.

Then from afar the battle cry is called out to rally the bloodthirsty hoard.... and the battle begins.