Building a foundation for performance

November 24, 2018 ∙ worth-watching, performance

In her “Building a foundation for performance” presentation at performance.now() 2018, Michelle Vu tells a story of how the web performance team at Pinterest started off and made performance a priority for the company.

Pinterest created a dedicated performance team in 2017.
Ownership over performance involves looking after metrics quality, tooling (analytics, monitoring), regression investigations, analysis, support.
Tie performance metrics to business metrics. Explain what 200ms page load regression means for the business.
Start with building trust by validating performance metrics, implementing confidence tests, creating graphs reflecting real user experience and catching regressions.
In case of an incident, identify an owner, set a severity level, follow the runbook and do a post mortem.
Set a company-wide goal to improve key performance metrics.
Write documentation on key metrics, past optimizations, ideas for future improvements, regression investigation runbook.
Consult other teams and conduct trainings.