With a record revenue of R$ 9.38 billion in just 24 hours and 14.4 million orders registered, the 2024 Black Friday solidified its position as the main event in Brazilian e-commerce, according to data from the Hora a Hora panel. In addition to the significant increase in sales volume, the date brought significant technical challenges: 55% of retailers reported slowdowns or instability in their systems, and 40% of these problems were attributed to failures in critical APIs, according to the FGV E-Commerce Yearbook.
Given this scenario of high operational complexity, practices such as Continuous Testing and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) have gained traction as essential tools to ensure availability, security, and performance. These approaches allow anticipating failures before they reach production, automating validations at scale, and maintaining resilience even in extreme peak situations.
Vericode, a software quality specialist, has been directly involved in this process. In 2024, the company led the infrastructure preparation for Grupo Casas Bahia’s Black Friday, simulating 20 million simultaneous users with the K6 tool and real-time monitoring via Grafana. The operation faced peaks of up to 15 million requests per minute, maintaining stability and performance throughout the shopping event.
For this year’s Black Friday, the company expects the application of artificial intelligence in automated testing and observability to gain even more prominence. AI-based solutions promise to predict bottlenecks more accurately, adjust flows in real-time, and expand test coverage with less human effort, raising the standard of quality and efficiency in digital operations.
Joab Júnior, partner at Vericode and an expert in software testing and reliability engineering, highlights the importance of advanced practices to ensure stability during high-demand periods: “Supporting millions of simultaneous requests is only possible with early preparation, continuous automation, and consolidated SRE practices. This reduces the risk of critical failures, ensures digital experience integrity, and preserves revenue,” he explains.
In addition to load testing and monitoring, Vericode also invests in solutions such as dott.ai, a test automation platform with a low-code approach. The tool accelerates deliveries without compromising technical governance, contributing to system stability even during critical periods like Black Friday or high-traffic product launches.
According to a Neotrust Confi survey, major retailers’ search endpoints recorded up to 3 million requests per minute at the 2024 peak. The adoption of automated pipelines, continuous regression testing, and active observability has become standard among companies seeking competitiveness and operational continuity during the most demanding periods of the commercial calendar.
For Joab Júnior, this scenario requires a shift in mindset for technology teams: “The volume of access is becoming increasingly unpredictable, and the only way to respond efficiently is by integrating quality from the start of the development cycle. It’s not just about testing more, but testing better—with intelligence, automation, and a focus on reliability.”
