Origin Of Performance Testing

There is a lot of chaos in performance testing in the IT industry. And using resources dynamically as per the demand and requirement. But is this term new and originated in the IT field? »»

If your answer is yes. Then I would like to correct, performance testing is being in use for a long. The term performance testing originated from one of the most ancient branches of engineering, Civil Engineering. Performance testing is already in use on various structures like bridges for a very long time.

The next question that can come to mind is, is performance testing the same in IT and Civil?

The basic concept behind both testing is the same, to check the performance of something over some parameter.
In bridges this parameter is the deflection on the application of load in various scenarios, in computers it is time and resource utilization at various loads and conditions.

But there is one important difference that needs to go through.
Bridges are created on the site, it depends on geographic conditions and a lot of other factors as well, whereas computers are made in factories.

In bridges, it is very hard to have a simulation or create an exact copy of structures. So, it requires to done testing on each structure. That means if an engineer has created 1000 bridges he/she needs to have performance testing on each structure.

At the same time in IT, say computers or cloud infrastructure, simulation is easy, and software can be reproduced like twin (even if they match more than that). So all the hardware and pieces of software are more reliable and have almost the same properties when reproduced. So here there is no requirement for doing performance testing on every device/software. At worst conditions, the sampling concept can fulfill the need.
In addition, we can have one result be easily used for some related/similar functionality and decide what resource utilization will be and provide resources dynamically as per automatic trigger. Results are more reliable and tend to be accurate here.

One more thing that needs to focus on here we can have an estimate for resources and change the resource using cloud infrastructure at any time with auto or a single click. Whereas in physical structures like bridges, it is hard and not easy to change performance now and then.