Performance Requirements vs Goals vs Objectives - By Scott Barber

1. Performance requirements—criteria that are absolutely non-negotiable due to contractual obligations, service level agreements or business needs. Only those criteria whose sub-par performance would unquestionably lead to a decision to delay a release are absolutely required.

2. Performance goals—criteria desired for release, but negotiable under certain circumstances. For instance, if a response time goal for a particular transaction is set at 3 seconds, but the actual response time is determined to be 3.3 seconds, it is likely stakeholders will choose to release the application and defer performance tuning of that transaction for a future release.

3. Performance testing objectives—items that add value to the team through the process of performance testing but are not intrinsically quantitative. For example, one objective might be to provide certain data to systems administrators to assist them in tuning systems under their purview. Another objective might be to determine peak application usage that the existing network can support.

The above content has been taken from a white paper "Get performance requirements right - think like a user" written by Scott Barber and published by Compuware. The reference document can be accessed via this link.