“Learn by doing” is a time-honored maxim, but when it comes to performance-testing your SAP system, there are some things you’d rather not learn by doing wrong. A performance test project involves many highly skilled people from both inside and outside your organization. Once test execution begins, you can’t afford to have these people standing around idle or not using their time efficiently. While a certain amount of downtime is unavoidable for both people and systems, it can be minimized. Successfully executing efficient performance tests requires discipline, leadership, quick thinking, and even a bit of luck. Most of all, it requires thorough planning and the right testing strategies.