A Quick Look at User Acceptance Testing

1. User acceptance testing is the last stage carried out during software development. In other words, the software development or product enhancement concludes with user acceptance testing.
2. It is typically carried out under the leadership and supervision of a business analyst.
3. A business analyst is a liaison between the tech team implementing solutions and the business process owner. His role is to bring clarity to business requirements and drive the quality to a technological solution.
4. The outcome of user acceptance testing is PASS/FAIL. It means the product will go or will not go into production.
5. It is typically carried out in sandboxes or a specially built staging environment.
6. In the context of UAT, the responsibilities of a business analyst include, identifying end users as key testers, allocating testing resources, scheduling test cases, validating test data set up and finally signoff the outcome of UAT.
7. Some of the best practices include advance preparation and planning, creating a dedicated channel for communication for all members involved in UAT, and establishing a project-specific UAT process.
8. Some of the circumstances in which UAT fails are: key test cases are not identified or missing, inexperienced end-users, and test scripts are not a reflection of real-life scenarios.

Takeaways:

User acceptance testing is a critical phase that assures the quality and functional delivery of the requested feature by the business owner.