By Tim Kadlec CHAPTER 4iMPaCT of a PeRfoRManCe buDgeT
Let’s take a look at the impact on your decision making of having a perfor-
mance budget in place.
Your team is debating whether it makes sense to add a content slider to
display more products on the home page, or to display five items by default
and provide a link to browse for more. The cases for each direction could
easily be made, but you’ve already decided your home page can weigh no
more than 400KB and its already at 350KB. The script and extra content
would push the weight well above that number. At this point, because you
have a performance budget to refer to, you have three options.
- You could choose to optimize an existing feature or asset on the page.
If you can decrease the weight of another feature (say an image that
hasn’t yet been compressed or a script that could be simplified) enough
to allow the slider to be added without exceeding the budget, your team
can choose to add it to the page. - You can remove an existing feature or asset on the page. Maybe you
really want that content slider, but you can ditch the big promotional
image. If you can do that and stay under budget, the content slider gets
the go-ahead. - You can choose not to add the slider. If nothing can be optimized to
a high enough degree, and you decide that the slider isn’t important
enough to push out another feature from the home page, then you
don’t add it.
Without the budget in place, you would have no framework for this
discussion. Since no performance base has been set, making the case that
the content slider adds too much weight to the page is difficult. When you
have this baseline set, it simplifies the discussion.