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Creating a technical report

Scatter plots

Pareto charts

Trend charts

Summary spreadsheets

Stakeholder Reports

Stakeholder reports are the most formal of the performance data sharing formats. These
reports must be able to stand alone while at the same time being intuitive to someone who
is not working on the project in a day-to-day technical role. Typically, these reports
center on acceptance criteria and risks. To be effective, stakeholder reports typically need
to include:
·

The acceptance criteria to which the results relate

Intuitive, visual representations of the most relevant data

A brief verbal summary of the chart or graph in terms of criteria

Intuitive, visual representations of the workload model and test environment

Access to associated technical reports, complete data sets, and test conditions

A summary of observations, concerns, and recommendations

When preparing stakeholder reports, consider that most stakeholder reports meet with one
(or more) of the following three reactions. All three are positive in their own way but
may not seem to be at first. These reactions and some recommended responses follow:

"These are great, but where's the supporting data?" This is the most common
response from a technical stakeholder. Many people and organizations want to have
all of the data so that they can draw their own conclusions. Fortunately, this is an easy
question to handle: simply include the entire spreadsheet with this supporting data as
an appendix to the report.

"Very pretty, but what do they mean?" This is where text explanations are useful.
People who are not familiar with performance testing or performance results often
need to have the implications of the results spelled out for them. Remember that more
than 90 percent of the times, performance testers are the bearers of bad news that the
stakeholder was not expecting. The tester has the responsibility to ensure that the
stakeholder has confidence in the findings, as well as presenting this news in a
constructive manner.

"Terrific! This is exactly what I wanted! Don't worry about the final report --
these will do nicely." While this seems like a blessing, do not take it as one. Sooner
or later, your tables and charts will be presented to someone who asks one of the two
preceding questions, or worse, asks how the data was obtained. If there is not at least
a final report that tells people where to find the rest of the data, people will question
the results because you are not present to answer those questions.

Creating a Technical Report

Although six key components of a technical report are listed below, all six may not be
appropriate for every technical report. Similarly, there may be additional information that
should be included based on exactly what message you are trying to convey with the
report. While these six components will result in successful technical reports most of the