BFCM countdown calendar

The readiness program counts back from the event date. If Black Friday is November 28, you start on October 10 (T-7 weeks). If you start later, compress the schedule, but keep every go/no-go gate.

Each milestone below lists what to run, how to run it in MaxoPerf, and the passing criteria.

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T-6 weeks: Baseline and model

Goal: Set the reference numbers the rest of the readiness program builds on.

What to run

• Full-funnel load test at 1× modeled peak. This is the first formal performance test of the season. It uses the traffic model from capacity planning and traffic modeling.

How to run it in MaxoPerf

1. Open the MaxoPerf console → Tests → New test.
2. Name it bfcm-{year}-baseline. The rest of the program refers back to this name.
3. Upload the full-funnel Taurus YAML covering browse → search → PDP → cart → checkout.
4. Set failure criteria: p95 (global) > 1000ms and error rate > 1 %.
5. Run for 20 minutes at modeled peak VU count.
6. If the run passes, tag it as the year’s baseline run. You compare against this run at T+1.
7. If the run fails, open the per-label breakdown and find the endpoint that causes the failure before you continue.

Passing criteria

All failure criteria green. p95 for each funnel stage within SLO. Error rate < 0.5 % across all labels.

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T-5 weeks: Smoke all BFCM paths

Goal: Hit every endpoint that will be under load at least once at low load.

What to run

• Smoke tests (1–5 VUs) for every BFCM-specific endpoint. Include new features, promotion pages and integrations that did not exist last year.

How to run it in MaxoPerf

1. Create a smoke-test variant of the full-funnel scenario: bfcm-{year}-smoke.
2. Set concurrency to 1–5 VUs, duration 2 minutes.
3. Run once per environment change or new deployment.
4. Check these closely: a new checkout step, a new loyalty/points integration, a new recommendation engine, the flash-deal landing page.

Passing criteria

No errors. All endpoints respond within 2× their SLO threshold at 1 VU.

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T-4 weeks: Load validation

Goal: Show that the system handles the modeled peak load within SLO on every critical path.

What to run

• Load test at 1× modeled peak. The same test as the T-6 week baseline, with any fixes applied.
• Load test at 1.25× modeled peak. A small stretch to confirm headroom.

How to run it in MaxoPerf

1. Duplicate the bfcm-{year}-baseline test and rename to bfcm-{year}-load-1x.
2. Run at modeled peak VU count. Confirm it passes all failure criteria.
3. Duplicate again, set VUs to 1.25× modeled peak. Run for 15 minutes. Confirm passing.
4. Review the per-label latency breakdown. Flag any label with p95 > 80 % of its SLO at 1× as a risk.

Passing criteria

Both load tests pass failure criteria. Headroom confirmed between 1× and 1.25× runs.

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T-3 weeks: Break it

Goal: Find the exact breaking point and confirm your modeled peak sits well below it.

What to run

• Stress test: gradual ramp to 200 % modeled peak. Find the inflection point.
• Spike test: doorbuster profile. Find the shock-load recovery time.

How to run it in MaxoPerf

For the stress test:

1. Create bfcm-{year}-stress.
2. Use the staged ramp from spike and stress for sales: 25 % → 50 % → 100 % → 150 % → 200 % of modeled peak, 10 minutes at each stage.
3. Set failure criteria to fail at error rate > 5 % or p95 > 3000 ms.
4. After the run, note the VU count at which the failure criterion fires. That is the breaking point.

For the spike test:

1. Create bfcm-{year}-spike-doorbuster.
2. Use the doorbuster Taurus YAML: idle baseline → near-instant jump to 5× modeled peak → 10-minute hold → drop and recovery window.
3. Watch the recovery time after the VU drop and any errors that persist.

Passing criteria

Stress test: breaking point > 150 % of modeled peak. Spike test: system recovers (error rate < 0.5 %) within 3 minutes of VU drop.

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T-2 weeks: Fix and re-test

Goal: Close the gaps found at T-3 weeks before the dress rehearsal.

What to run

• Targeted re-tests of bottleneck endpoints. Test the changed components, not the full suite.
• Regression smoke test after fixes are deployed.

How to run it in MaxoPerf

1. For each bottleneck identified at T-3 weeks, create a targeted test covering only that endpoint and the dependencies that interact with it.
2. Set the VU count to 120 % of modeled peak, just above the previous breaking point.
3. Confirm the bottleneck is resolved.
4. Run the full baseline test again to confirm the fix did not cause a regression.

Passing criteria

Every re-tested bottleneck now passes at 150 % of modeled peak. Baseline regression test result matches the T-6 week baseline within 10 %.

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T-1 week: Dress rehearsal

Goal: Run the whole event profile from start to finish with the war-room staffed.

What to run

• Multi-hour soak test (8 h minimum). See Soak and stability.
• Multi-wave dress rehearsal. The full doorbuster + email wave + sustained profile, 3+ hours.
• War-room exercise. The full team is in position, and you inject an amber condition mid-run on purpose.

How to run it in MaxoPerf

1. Schedule the 8-hour soak to start the night before: Schedules tab → New schedule → fire at 22:00.
2. Review the soak result the next morning before starting the dress rehearsal.
3. If the soak shows drift > 10 %, do not start the dress rehearsal until you find the root cause.
4. Run the multi-wave dress rehearsal: create bfcm-{year}-dress-rehearsal, use the multi-wave profile YAML.
5. Run for 3+ hours with the full team in the war-room.
6. Inject an amber event at the 90-minute mark: disable the mock payment gateway for 5 minutes and have the team follow the runbook.

Passing criteria

Soak: no drift > 10 %, no errors in final 2 hours. Dress rehearsal: all failure criteria green throughout all waves. War-room exercise: team detects and responds to injected amber event per runbook within the expected time window.

Go/No-Go gate. The engineering lead and the business lead review the results together and sign off before game day.

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Day of event

Goal: Run the event with full visibility and a tested runbook in hand.

What to run in MaxoPerf

• Pre-sale smoke test (T-60 min): 1–5 VUs against the full checkout journey. Must finish with no errors before sale starts.
• Synthetic monitoring run (throughout the event): a low-VU continuous run against checkout that acts as a heartbeat. Set failure criteria so the war-room gets an alert as soon as any step fails.

Monitoring

1. Open the MaxoPerf Active runs page in the war-room browser window.
2. Keep the current run’s Overview tab open in a second window for per-label latency visibility.
3. Check every 5 minutes per the monitoring assignment matrix.

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T+1 week: Post-mortem and archive

Goal: Close the program and set up for next year.

What to run in MaxoPerf

• Year-over-year comparison. Open the game-day peak run → Compare → select last year’s baseline. Document the delta chips.

How to archive in MaxoPerf

1. Tag the game-day run: open run detail → add tag bfcm-{year}-game-day.
2. Tag the dress rehearsal run: bfcm-{year}-dress-rehearsal.
3. Set the dress rehearsal or game-day peak run as the pinned baseline for next year.

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Where to go next

• BFCM readiness checklist: the task-level checklist that matches this calendar.
• War-room and runbook: how the team coordinates on game day.
• Peak events do and don’t: common mistakes at each phase of the program.