Knowing What To Measure
Quantum Mechanics has a concept called the Uncertainty Principle. Named after physicist Werner Heisenberg, the principle can be summarized for our purposes as the act of measuring some quantity itself affecting the observed value of that quantity. Although merely an analogy for us currently bound to non-quantum systems, it serves as a useful warning as we take our measures and metrics: don’t let the instrumentation impact the measurements that are being taken for our app’s performance.
Starting with some general guidelines, we’ll look at some key factors that need to be attended to and accounted for to gather meaningful test data. Using those guidelines to establish a basic context, we’ll start learning some key terminology that will allow us to get into more specifics in future sections of this chapter.
General Guidelines
As we review and examine the various means and procedures for taking our performance profile, we’...
