Setting Performance Benchmarks

Summary

Defining clear, agreed-upon performance targets (e.g. 'p95 response time under 500ms') before testing — without a benchmark, 'is this performance acceptable?' has no objective answer.

• 1Draft a performance benchmark for a hypothetical system's key user action.
• 2Learn why benchmarks should be based on real user expectations, not arbitrary round numbers.
• 3Practice justifying a specific benchmark threshold with reasoning, not just a guess.