What is Load Testing? — UK Software Development Guide
Direct Answer
Load testing is the practice of testing a software system under expected and peak load conditions to understand its performance characteristics and identify bottlenecks. It determines how many concurrent users a system can handle, what the response time is at various load levels, and where the system fails under stress.
Load-testing in the UK
Load testing is mandatory for UK software serving significant user volumes. UK FCA operational resilience requirements (PS21/3) require firms to test their ability to stay within impact tolerances — load testing is the technical mechanism for this. NHS supplier on-boarding requirements include evidence of performance under expected NHS user load. Black Friday load testing is standard practice for UK eCommerce — testing at 5–15x normal traffic. ClickMasters uses k6 (modern, scriptable, integrates with CI/CD) and JMeter (for legacy compatibility) for load testing, delivering a performance report with bottleneck identification and remediation recommendations.
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