 | Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications by Microsoft Corporation
Buy new: $31.49 / Used from: $39.33 This is a tool, technology, & process agnostic book. That means the book applies equally well to a LoadRunner/Eclipse/Agile project it applies to a VSTS/.NET/CMMI project. This book focuses on core principles that deliberate and successful performance test projects seem to have in common and topics the authors and reviews agreed were common enough to be worthy of your consideration.
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 | High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers by Steve Souders
Buy new: $19.79 / Used from: $5.74 No other book lays out front-end performance considerations in a way that testers can immediately use to enhance their performance testing.
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 | An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (Silver Anniversary Edition) by Gerald M. Weinberg
Buy used from: $118.96 This book has nothing to do with performance testing directly. What it is about is how performance testers think, or at least how they need to think to be effective. Every book on this list will be more valuable after reading this one.
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 | Testing Computer Software, 2nd Edition by Cem Kaner
Buy new: $56.44 / Used from: $29.97 This is as close to "the one complete" book about software testing as there can be. If you are a tester and you haven't internalized the concepts in this book, you're not testing as well as you could be.
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 | Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Cem Kaner
Buy new: $26.39 / Used from: $20.70 No matter what kind of software testing you do, this book is a must read to understand the complexities related to testing software and how to think about tackling those complexities.
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 | Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (Microsoft .NET Development Series) by Sam Guckenheimer
Buy new: $38.32 / Used from: $19.75 This is the *only* book about software development process that has ever made sense to me. It's also the only one that advocates a process that works for performance testing. The overarching concept of "value-up" over "work-down" is critical to successful performance testing.
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 | Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is by Donald C. Gause; Gerald M. Weinberg
Buy new: $12.55 / Used from: $5.98 Another Weinberg book about thinking and problem solving. Performance testing may seem like a straight forward task, but any performance tester will tell you that you spend more time solving problems than anything else. Weinberg's insights help.
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 | Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach by Gerald M. Weinberg
Buy new: $26.95 / Used from: $7.99 I am fond of saying "There is no such thing as a junior performance tester." Performance Testers *have* to be technical leaders to be an effective part of the development team. As always, Weinberg's insights are invaluable.
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 | Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald M. Weinberg
Buy used from: $33.60 Performance testing is a naturally consultative process. Weinberg is an amazing trainer of consultative thinking. You can't go wrong by embracing his lessons.
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 | More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit by Gerald M. Weinberg
Buy new: $30.55 / Used from: $25.97 Performance testing is a naturally consultative process. Weinberg is an amazing trainer of consultative thinking. You can't go wrong by embracing (even more of) his lessons.
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 | Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization (VOICES) by Andrew B. King
Buy used from: $11.40 This book is a little developer-centric, but it contains knowledge that is essential for performance testers of web sites to enable them to effectively performance test web sites and be a valuable asset to the performance tuning team.
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 | Performance Solutions: A Practical Guide to Creating Responsive, Scalable Software (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) by Connie U. Smith
Buy new: $39.99 / Used from: $5.00 Written for software architects, much of this book is outside the scope of what most performance testers are asked to do. That said, understanding the considerations to architecting a well performing system is extremely valuable when testing the performance of those systems.
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 | Performance by Design: Computer Capacity Planning By Example by Daniel A. Menasce
Buy new: $43.99 / Used from: $34.85 If architecting a system is the first and developing & testing the system is the second, capacity planning & management is the third phase of a systems performance life-cycle. Performance testers are often and rightly asked to participate in capacity planning and management exercises. This book will give you the foundational knowledge you need to be effective in this role.
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 | High-Performance Client/Server by Chris Loosley
Buy used from: $3.97 One of the saddest things about the majority of today's performance testers is that they have only studied web-based applications. Most of the best lessons about designing and testing software performance of multi-user systems comes from mainframe and client/server systems. Loosley's book captures many of those lessons.
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 | Web Performance Tuning: Speeding Up the Web (O'Reilly Nutshell) by Patrick Killelea
Buy used from: $0.39 This was the first book I ever read related to software performance. It is certainly written for developers, and it's starting to show it's age, but the concepts are sound and invaluable to a software performance tester.
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