Best Practices for Designing, Developing, and Testing to Ensure Optimum System Scalability and Performance
This document examines the most critical concepts, related to software performance, to keep in mind during the design, development, and testing phases of your development projects. Download the Document
This document examines the most critical concepts, related to software performance, to keep in mind during the design, development, and testing phases of your development projects. Best Practices for
Designing, Developing,
and Testing to Ensure
Optimum System
Scalability and
Performance
Performance & Scalability, SAP
August, 2026
Designing, Developing,
and Testing to Ensure
Optimum System
Scalability and
Performance
Performance & Scalability, SAP
August, 2026
2
Agenda
What is good performance?
Best Practices to obtain performance requirements from users and
understand impacts for design, architecture, and implementation
• Plan
• Develop
• Test
Agenda
What is good performance?
Best Practices to obtain performance requirements from users and
understand impacts for design, architecture, and implementation
• Plan
• Develop
• Test
3
Agenda
What is good performance?
Best Practices to obtain performance requirements from users and
understand impacts for design, architecture, and implementation
§ Plan
§ Develop
§ Test
Agenda
What is good performance?
Best Practices to obtain performance requirements from users and
understand impacts for design, architecture, and implementation
§ Plan
§ Develop
§ Test
4
What is (Good) Performance?
Performance and Scalability Indicators
The most important indicators for performance are response time and throughput
– Good response times are especially important when users have to work
interactively.
– High throughput is generally more relevant in background processes.
Companies expect a system to behave in a predictable manner when load increases. This means a
system always has to run in the most optimal manner, even in high performance situations in which
several million document line items have to be processed per hour.
Throughput
ScalabilitySizing
Response
Time
What is (Good) Performance?
Performance and Scalability Indicators
The most important indicators for performance are response time and throughput
– Good response times are especially important when users have to work
interactively.
– High throughput is generally more relevant in background processes.
Companies expect a system to behave in a predictable manner when load increases. This means a
system always has to run in the most optimal manner, even in high performance situations in which
several million document line items have to be processed per hour.
Throughput
ScalabilitySizing
Response
Time
5
What is (Good) Performance?
Performance and Scalability Indicators (cont.)
The precondition for this behavior is that the system – that is, software and hardware –
is scalable.
A scalable software system should handle growing amounts of work predictably, and it should be
easy to enlarge to process more tasks.
Example: If the load increases by a factor of ten, a well-scaling software system requires at most ten
times the resources, preferably less.
A poorly scaling system, in contrast, requires three times the resources to deal with twice the load.
When an IT system is scalable, it is possible to perform adequate sizing. During sizing the hardware
and necessary resources are determined for performance-critical business processes to run
smoothly.
Throughput
ScalabilitySizing
Response
Time
What is (Good) Performance?
Performance and Scalability Indicators (cont.)
The precondition for this behavior is that the system – that is, software and hardware –
is scalable.
A scalable software system should handle growing amounts of work predictably, and it should be
easy to enlarge to process more tasks.
Example: If the load increases by a factor of ten, a well-scaling software system requires at most ten
times the resources, preferably less.
A poorly scaling system, in contrast, requires three times the resources to deal with twice the load.
When an IT system is scalable, it is possible to perform adequate sizing. During sizing the hardware
and necessary resources are determined for performance-critical business processes to run
smoothly.
Throughput
ScalabilitySizing
Response
Time