In August I promised (here) to post a target table of content of this series of posts about performance benchmarks and delivered the first part covering the subjects I believe are relevant to managers.

I label “operational people” any individual or organization that is involved hands-on in the definition, implementation, execution and technical evaluation of a performance benchmark.

Today you find below the candidate list of subjects I believe are relevant to the operational people.

1) Knowing your starting state

1.   The system(s) you are going to replace
2.   The interaction between the systems
3.   The workload on each system

2) Simulating your final state

1.   Black box definition of the final state
2.   Defining the workload insisting on the black box based on the current state
3.   Defining the workload generated by functional and/or organizational changes

3) Ensuring the technologies are set to perform the best way for the desired final state

1.   Defining the metrics
2.   Defining how the metrics are grouped
3.   Sharing the metrics with the vendors/implementation teams

4)  Executing the tests and reviewing the results.