Load Testing Is Complicated: A Case Study of NJ Unemployment Insurance
summary
Case study of New Jersey unemployment load testing that replaces protocol scripts with browser-based Playwright tests run under Artillery, executed in AWS CodeBuild for 30-minute runs. A full claim intake test attempts 934 iterations and records 99.8% journey success, generating ~333,000 HTTP requests across tests. k6 is evaluated then abandoned for maintainability; breakpoint testing finds collapse near peak (about four‑of‑five COVID traffic) and reveals front-end render time and single slow requests as root causes.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Load testing introduction
- 3:58NJ unemployment project overview
- 7:53Testing strategy and risks
- 11:44First K6 attempt
- 16:27Missing requests and protocol limits
- 18:33Switching to Artillery
- 22:51User journey metrics
- 27:27Breakpoint testing
- 29:55Takeaways from project
- 34:34Q&A
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