A computer implemented method for testing the resiliency of a software application. The computer implemented method can test the resiliency of a software application by monitoring the program state of the software application and trigger a shutdown request when the specified program state has been reached. The shutdown request can be transmitted to the application software and executed to shut down one or more functionalities of the software application. In some examples, the method can specify the functionality to shut down and the program state which the shutdown occurs can be specified in an application configuration file.