Time behavior

Time behavior is the degree to which the response times, processing times, and throughput rates of a product or system, when performing its functions, meet requirements. It is a quality attribute and, per ISO/IEC 25010, one of three sub-characteristics of performance efficiency, alongside resource utilization and capacity.

Time behavior is usually the sub-characteristic people mean when they talk informally about a system’s performance, or how quickly a request is served, how long a batch job takes to complete, and how many operations a system can sustain per unit of time. It’s typically the target of performance testing, load testing, and stress testing, which measure latency and throughput under varying conditions to check they meet their specified requirements.

References

• ISO/IEC (2023). ISO/IEC 25010:2023 — Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) — Quality model.