What is a user acceptance test?

User acceptance test is part of the wider effort to verify that software meets the needs of the end-user. It is not necessarily a paid customer: if someone develops custom internal software for a company, the user acceptance testing is performed by employees of that company.

What are the types of acceptance testing?

Alpha/beta acceptance testing is done in the early stages of developing software to avoid and/or resolve major conceptual flaws. Contract acceptance testing happens at the end of development to see if the software can be handed over to end-users. Sometimes, there is also operational acceptance testing for introducing key new functionality or major overhauls of software that has been in use for a while.

What is the difference between UAT and acceptance testing?

UAT is just the acronym for User Acceptance Testing.

Who is responsible for UAT?

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is performed by a group of end-users. For B2B solutions, you would usually want both highly experienced personnel with a good understanding of business requirements and regular staff that will be working with your software. It is somewhat similar for B2C solutions, where you need the input of both savvy users and regular customers.

What is UAT in agile?

UAT in Agile is the final phase of testing in the Agile software development process, where end-users evaluate the product to ensure it meets their needs and expectations before deployment. In Agile, UAT typically occurs in short iterations or sprints, allowing for continuous feedback and refinement of the product. UAT involves real users executing test cases and scenarios in a realistic environment to validate the software’s functionality, usability, and overall quality. The feedback gathered during UAT is used to make necessary adjustments and improvements before the product is released to production.

What is a UAT test environment?

A UAT test environment is a controlled setup closely resembling the production environment, used specifically for conducting User Acceptance Testing. It replicates production configurations and data to validate software functionality before deployment.

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What is user acceptance testing?

This involves performing a series of operations on an app after other critical app development procedures, such as system, functional, and integration testing. The evaluation is performed by the end-user or business client, and a UAT testing software. It’s done to verify that the product is in line with the intended use before moving it to the production environment.

What is the purpose of UAT?

The evaluation is geared toward validating the product’s viability in a real-world scenario, depending on the prevailing user needs, specifications, or even preferences. The focus here is usually on user feedback, whether positive or negative, which helps streamline the user experience by reducing the number of pain points when the product is finally deployed.

Best practices of UAT process management

Managing the UAT process effectively involves several key best practices:

Early Involvement and Planning: Start involving end-users and stakeholders early. With users, you can do it via interviews or surveys, while with stakeholders, focus groups or workshops would help a lot. This helps in understanding their requirements and expectations, laying out clear objectives, and defining the scope of testing.
Comprehensive Test Case Development: Create detailed and realistic test cases that cover all possible scenarios. These cases should be easy to understand and execute, even for non-technical users.
Realistic Test Environment Setup: Set up a testing environment that closely resembles the production environment. This ensures that testing reflects real-world conditions and provides accurate results.
Clear Acceptance Criteria: Define clear acceptance criteria for each test case and for the overall UAT phase. This helps in determining whether the system meets user expectations and when it’s ready for deployment.
Effective Communication and Collaboration: Foster open communication and collaboration among all stakeholders involved in the UAT process. Regular updates, meetings, and feedback sessions ensure everyone is on the same page and any issues are addressed promptly.
Thorough Issue Management: Implement a robust system for reporting, tracking, and resolving issues identified during testing. Prioritize issues based on their severity and impact on the system’s functionality.
Regression Testing: Don’t forget about regression testing. Ensure that any changes made during the development process do not adversely affect existing functionalities.
User Training and Support: Provide adequate training and support to end-users participating in UAT. This helps them understand who is responsible for User Acceptance Testing and ensures the smooth execution of the testing process.
Feedback Collection and Analysis: Actively seek feedback from end-users and stakeholders throughout the UAT process. Analyse this feedback to identify trends, common issues, and areas for improvement.
Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Document the UAT results, findings, and best practices for future reference. Share this knowledge with relevant stakeholders to facilitate continuous improvement.

By following these best practices, you can effectively manage the UAT process, validate the software’s readiness for deployment, and ensure high user satisfaction with the final product.

UAT prerequisites

Before initiating UAT, it’s crucial to ensure that certain prerequisites are in place for a smooth and effective testing process. Here are some essential UAT prerequisites:

Clear Requirements Documentation: Ensure that comprehensive and documented requirements are available. These requirements serve as the basis for UAT test cases and help stakeholders understand what functionality to expect from the software.
Functional Testing Completion: Functional testing should be completed successfully before UAT begins. Functional testing verifies that each component of the system performs as expected according to the specified requirements.
Test Environment Setup: Establish a dedicated test environment that resembles the production environment. This environment should include the hardware, software, configurations, and data to simulate real-world usage scenarios accurately.
Test Data Preparation: Prepare relevant and realistic test data for UAT use. This data should represent various user roles, scenarios, and edge cases to validate the system’s functionality thoroughly.
Stakeholder Availability: Ensure that key stakeholders, including end-users, business owners, project managers, and developers, are available and actively engaged throughout the UAT process. Their participation is essential for validating requirements, providing feedback, and making acceptance decisions.
Acceptance Criteria Definition: Define clear acceptance criteria for each test case and overall UAT phase. These criteria will serve as the benchmark for determining whether the system meets user expectations and is ready for production deployment.

Ensuring these prerequisites before initiating UAT, you can maximise the effectiveness of the testing process, identify issues early, and ultimately deliver a high-quality product that meets user requirements.

Make sure the test scenarios are representing real life scenario. Meaning that you can't simply reuse the QA tests (these are just testing the functional part).

2cantango Posted in SalesForce Reddit thread, 2 years ago

The available UAT types

Now that you understand the definition of UAT, what are the prevalent types you should know? Well, the AT types may include:

Alpha and beta: giving the app to select end-users to evaluate its usability and give feedback for later improvement

Regulation (RAT): ensuring that the app complies with the required legal regulations

Contract (CAT): evaluating whether the app in question embodies the qualities, criteria, and specifications provided in the development contract

Business (BAT): evaluating whether the product meets certain business requirements in a real-world scenario, against a predetermined business case

Operational (OAT): analysing the predefined workflow of the product in question in terms of compatibility and reliability, as well as its operational readiness in terms of stability

Who performs the evaluation?

It can be performed by two groups of people, including everyday end-users or business clients. For instance, a client might need to test the viability of a commercial app or a custom-built tool before deploying it for real-world applications. Similarly, app developers may avail products to a select group of end-users to gather feedback to streamline user experience before a mass rollout. An issue tracking software is used in this case.

User acceptance testing brings a lot of external people, and most of them have no QA experience. This means that you will run into suboptimal tickets and likely get a lot of duplicate reports, too. aqua’s AI copilot can help end-users make better tickets and spot duplicate items for the QA team to remove.

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A brief description of the process

Although UAT can be done in many ways, depending on the overall objectives, here is the standard and most prevalent user acceptance testing process flow:

1
Analysis of business requirements — this allows strategies, as well as the implementation timeframe to be set. Documents used at this stage include project charter, process flow diagrams, and system requirement specifications (SRS)
2
Creation of the evaluation plan — the entry and exit criteria are documented at this stage to outline the strategies that will be used to validate the app product in question
3
Identify analysis scenarios and cases — identification of viable test scenarios to build relevant cases, as well as highlight clear guidelines and steps to be followed during the whole process
4
Preparation of data — live data is scrambled to preserve its integrity and security. The participants also familiarise themselves with the database flow at this stage
5
Run and record the results — a software test tool is used to run the cases, as well as automate bug reporting
6
Confirm business objectives met — a sign-off email is sent, signalling the product is ready to move to the production environment

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Main challenges encountered

User acceptance testing techniques minimise the risks of deploying unreliable products in terms of experience. But since this evaluation is critical and often reliable, it faces several challenges too, including:

Poor planning — which can happen when the previous stages of app development took more time than initially intended
Wrong choice of participating users – which can mean inaccurate or inconsistent feedback and bug reporting
App dependencies — if the product is checked and deployed in the same environment
Delays — occurring due to poor communication lines between the evaluators

Enhance your testing experience with the aqua tool for UA

Among the best practices of user acceptance testing includes leveraging a tool that doesn’t limit your opportunities to enhance your experience, as well as ensuring that you deploy a perfect app product. The aqua tool is ideal for anyone in the testing process, including end-users and internal testers. You can perform your checks around the clock with this tool and generate a visual proof of your bug reports.

This tool allows users to execute a user acceptance testing plan in five easy steps:

Set the requirements
Communicate with your team to stay on track and monitor progress
Validate whether your requirements and business objectives are met
Monitor the progress of testing and results with pre-set on your project dashboard or custom reports
Resolve any highlighted issues and fix bugs

Conclusion

UAT is a critical phase in app development that any business would want to get right from the word go. Typically, it can help if you look into a relevant user acceptance test plan example and replicate it for your app project, especially if you are doing it for the first time. Alternatively, contact us to get started with the aqua tool for UAT.

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