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Performance Testing for UK University's Major Peak Traffic Event

Read about how Roq supported its UK-based university client through 'clearing', their annual major peak traffic event.

The Client

Roq’s client is one of the UK’s largest universities with over 40,000 students.

The Challenge

Every August, UK universities are faced with a major peak traffic event, as A-Level students across the country access their websites to discover which courses are available to them through the clearing process.

Given the business-critical nature of course enrolments, the client’s website needed to perform and allow students timely access to the relevant pages during the peak.

The original non-functional requirement shared by the client stated that the site needed to stand up to 20,000 users over a yet-to-be-defined time period. 

It’s important to note that the client did not expect any issues with the clearing website, but diligently wished to gain external assurance that the site stood up to their expectations.

The Solution

A key client stakeholder had worked with Roq previously, at a different company and after being impressed by what Roq had delivered, they knew Roq would be a good fit for this engagement. 

Key engagement features:

  • Creation of test coverage document

  • Define nonfunctional requirements in detail

  • Confirmation and selection of test tooling

  • Analysis of user journeys and creation of related test scripts

  • Execution of tests including, retesting to support defect resolution

  • Test reporting

  • Handover of test assets created

What is quite unique about this project is that Roq tested the live website, as opposed to performing tests in a test environment. To do this without causing any interruption to the live site, Roq performed the tests overnight. Testing the live website was done at the client's request, to give the best reflection of how the site would perform and provide extra confidence by the time clearing came around.

Upon client request, Roq used their extensive experience and tool-agnostic approach to own the choice of tooling and the relationship with the third-party tooling supplier. This decision proved to be a wise one, as once Roq had fully defined the non-functional requirements (NFRs) it was clear that the real need was around the number of page load requests per second, rather than the overall volume of users. This meant Roq could recommend the use of just 1,000 virtual users (VUs) to generate the required load over a set period. This was vastly less than the 20,000 VUs originally assumed to be required by the client and the decrease in VUs saved the client around £9,000!

The Outcome

The outcome of Roq’s engagement was that the client had the evidence, through detailed reporting, to assure that the clearing site could perform at twice the required level of volume and page load requests per second.

The site performed brilliantly and as expected on the day, meaning students across the UK were left with a great experience and secured university placements for September 2024.

Roq also left the client in a better place, handing over the performance test suite and upskilling the internal team so that they can run the pack in the future.

Roq was exactly what we needed, the project was a real success.

Roq is in continued discussions with the client on how they can further support them on their Quality Engineering journey.

Roq Value

  • The site performed brilliantly throughout clearing, allowing students across the UK to secure university placements.

  • Roq utilised their QE Principle of ‘Coaching’ to upskill client team for ongoing use of the performance test pack.

  • A tooling saving of around £9,000 due to highlighted decrease in virtual users.

If you’d like to find out more about how Roq can support your business, please reach out at ask@roq.co.uk.  

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