Katkat
Back

Web Application Performance Debugging

GoogleProduct Manager · Technical Screen
MediumProduct ManagerTechnical ScreenProduct / Decision Making

Last updated

Practice troubleshooting intermittent slowness in a multi-tier web application. The solution covers impact scoping, client and network checks, app traces, database and search diagnostics, cache behavior, background jobs, hypothesis testing, mitigation, stakeholder communication, and prevention.

Question

A client reports that the web application is intermittently very slow when generating reports or performing searches, even though no code has changed for five months. Explain your step-by-step troubleshooting approach. Include how you would:

Verify whether the issue affects a single user or multiple users.

Gather and analyze performance metrics (e.g., server logs, DB queries, network latency).

Form hypotheses, run experiments, and prioritize fixes.