What is UAT Testing and why is it so important?

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is important because a piece of software needs to work how it’s supposed to for users.  A piece of software can pass all sorts of other automated tests and those tests won’t catch the different ways that users actually use the product. That’s what actually matters, right?  This is where UAT tests come in. Designing, planning, and implementing them is half of the battle.  Executing them is another.

User Acceptance Test Plan

There are some very crucial things that need to be prepared as part of the UAT test plan. This needs to be done before starting the tests or involving other stakeholders. The first thing that needs developing are the scripts. These are what will guide the business users as they test the product. We suggest you have scripts to test both functional and migrated data. Casual scripts are things that you’re hoping is intuitive for the user to find a way to do on their own. Developing the user acceptance test scripts will make sure the users are capable of executing commands/tasks within your system.

User Acceptance Testing Process

You should teach your business users (testers) how to flag and a report bugs. It’s nice if you give them snacks to keep them fueled as they test your software. Before your users start testing your system, you also need to make sure they have all the necessary input data to put into the system. Furthermore, it needs to be very clear what kinds of things you want the user to execute.

UAT process

What, exactly, do you want them to do or achieve with your product? Having answers to these is all part of having a solid user acceptance testing methodology. These skills should be obvious to any UAT or QA analyst.  These should be well documented by product managers or product owners when the software was originally designed.

User Acceptance Test Plan

Here’s a checklist of questions that you should ask yourself before embarking on a UAT test cases:

• Have the team described all possible interactions?
• Is all the input needed to test available?
• It is possible to automatically document that the test is running?
• Have special customer restrictions been considered?
• Has all criteria ( performance, portability, etc.) been considered in which the testing will be evaluated?
• Is there a method for handling the problems discovered during the acceptance test?
• Have you defined the test references?
• Can you make sure there are no inconsistencies between the application requirements and the test requirements?

Following this checklist will help to ensure your test users are able to find your edge case bugs and that they end up well documented (and fixed!).