User Acceptance Testing: Best Practices & Methodology
In this lesson, we'll be looking at exactly what User Acceptance Testing is about, why it is so important that it is carried out, and best practices & methodology to employ when implementing.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a kind of design usability testing utilized after design completion with the intention to validate that the business requirements seized during layout initiation and preparation . The purpose isn't to debug the design but instead ensure that it matches the requirements for which it was designed.
Processes Preceding UAT Initiation
Oyarifa Agents is a stock broker firm. Having been in operation for years, they contracted out their IT infrastructure needs to a different software solutions supplier, Mabinty Solutions.
This was in reaction to the complaints (it was a probable cause of the dwindling fortune) received from clients stating their inability to carry out successful transactions on the stage.
It swung quickly to action, dispatching a team of company analysts and also a project manager to help kick-start the undertaking. Their first job includes, but isn't limited to, business requirements elicitation, analysis and collecting. This is to permit the team get a grasp of the business processes and requirements expected of their new platform. This will be recorded in the User & Software Requirement Specification files to be released by the team and forms the basis for the development of a new platform.
Oyarifa Agents' management signed off on the agreed deadline for job completion and conditions of product shipping.
In the terms of shipping, it had been agreed that the final product could be subject to a UAT confirming that the product met the business requirements and satisfies the organizational objects of Oyarifa Brokers. In the event it deviates, Mabinty Solutions will be required to fix it.
In order to guarantee a successful product delivery, Oyarifa Brokers engaged the services of a software project management and quality assurance company, Koroma & Bangura Associates (K&B), to help manage its job with Mabinty Solutions.
K&B drew up a project plan to guide all parties involved throughout the several phases of the plan life-cycle and ensured that pragmatic evaluations were completed often to help point out deviations ancient enough to be repaired.
The plan also highlighted action items or actions to be carried out before and during the UAT phase of this job, a best practice and methodology checklist, which includes, but isn't limited to the following: -
Knowing What to Evaluation
Being aware of what to check during a UAT is crucial. Without it, the testing is as good as not being completed at all.
Before the scheduled day, K&B did a run through of the company requirements and collectively with selected employees of Oyarifa Brokers, embarked on a newspaper walk-through of the new platform reviewing characteristics of utmost interest.
Design Effective Test Cases
Once a list of features to be tested has been made, the next step is to draw up an inventory of test case scenarios and the way it should be analyzed, for example, as an untrained user of this platform to help ascertain the system's intuitiveness in real-life use.
Expected Outcomes of Testing
The anticipated outcome of every feature being analyzed has to be known and documented prior to the UAT. This forms the cornerstone of the key metrics measuring the adherence or deviance from the business requirement noted against the actions required to achieve it.
The table below reveals a characteristic under UAT using anticipated results and actual outcomes.