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Page Download Times Study
Abstract History Methodology Conclusions Download data
Abstract:
Based
on an investigative survey of homepage download times,
the OurCampus! Quality Response Team has been
able to make some useful deductions about the distribution
of those times and is suggesting some possible action
items for the administrators of the OurCampus! Web
site.
History:
Last year, the OurCampus! Quality
Response Team was constituted and charged with investigating
the distribution of download times of the main home
page of OurCampus! In our first meeting, Cindy
Geozak and Wilson Fremont were selected as co-Team Leaders.
The QRT then held
a series of five morning meetings to discuss its methodology.
We agreed that we would survey download times in-house
and not at remote locations. Katie and Matt met and interviewed
various officers of our company and the entire QRT
team decided to
hold an one-day conference. When attendance was less
than expected, we scheduled an open forum
in which interested employees asked
questions. Based on that feedback, the team agreed
to ask our IT department to develop a custom application that would automatically record
download times.
Methodology:
When
we were ready to begin our data collection, we loaded
the
latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer and the
custom download time-tracking application
onto 5 identical personal computers in the Technical
Administration Department. Using standard
10/100 Mbps Ethernet connections, we attached the PCs to the primary
Web server for the main OurCampus! portal server. We opened
Internet Explorer, triggered the custom application,
and entered the URL of the TriCities OurCampus! home page
into the browser. Our custom application automatically
detected when the home page was finished downloaded and it recorded
in a log filethe elapsed time along with a date and time
stamp.
We then analyzed the collected data and present for
the first time publicly that data in the next section
of this report.
Conclusions:
We were surprised by the many different download times that
were recorded.
(see data in Excel Minitab SPSS format)
We were pleased to see that the mean time was only 12.8596 seconds.
We were pleased to discover that 50 percent of download
times were less than the mean and that 50 percent were
greater than the mean. This fact allowed us to use the
normal distribution to further analyze our data. Using
the principles of this distribution, we can conclude
the following:
• A 15-second download is less likely than a 14 or
13-second download. (Recall this was a question raised
in our open conference when we began our investigation.)
• If we can strive to eliminate times greater than
22.7 seconds, then more times will fall within 3 standard
deviations.
• One time out of every 10 times, an individual user
will experience a download time that is greater than 17.06
seconds.
• Since over 99 percent of download times fall within
plus or minus 3 standard deviations, our home page download
process meets the Six Sigma benchmark for industrial quality.
(Recall that senior management held a meeting last month
on the importance of the Six Sigma methodology.)
We would like to suggest that the funding for the QRT
be continued into next fiscal year so that we can undertake
a more complete sampling of home page (and other Web
page) download times.
Respectfully submitted,
The OurCampus! Quality Response Team
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