Performance tuning is the improvement of system performance. This is typically a computer systems. The motivation for such activity is called a performance problem, which can be real or anticipated. Most systems will respond to increased load with some degree of decreasing performance. A system's ability to accept higher load is called scalability, and modifying a system to handle a higher load is synonymous to performance tuning. Systematic tuning follows these steps: This is an instance of the measure-evaluate-improve-learn cycle from quality assurance.