Factors to Consider While Performing User Acceptance Testing!
No matter how many times functional testing is performed, integrating a new software into the user pattern has always been a huge challenge for businesses. A software with quick responsiveness and great functionality will have no value if it doesn’t cater to customers’ needs and requirements. Understand users’ needs and then based upon those needs, a consistent software should be developed so that user can interact easily with the software. Hence, there should be a process that checks for user acceptability and end to end business flow and that’s where User Acceptance Testing comes into picture.
What is User Acceptance Testing?
The software is coded by developers after interpreting the user requirements and testers test that software based upon their functional requirements. But, apart from functional requirements there are some business requirements and processes that can be understood only by an end user of the software. Thus, User Acceptance Testing is the final stage of testing in which the visibility and viability of the software is tested from a user’s perspective to ensure whether it meets all the needs or not.
Factors to Consider While Implementing UAT:
o Establish Proper Communication Between Different Teams:
A proper communication ensures efficient team collaboration. Generally, there is always a wide communication gap between UAT team, testing team and developer team that leads to several ambiguities in software requirements. Proper planning and timely communication is vital for effective UAT. Apart from this, UAT teams should use user friendly tools that can resolve log defects.
o Don’t Mix Functional Testing and UA Testing:
Functional testers should not mix functional testing and UAT testing. While performing functional testing they should check the complete software functionality. While doing UAT testing, functional testers should think in the user’s perspective and should carry out UAT testing accurately keeping users’ needs in mind.
o Pre-Plan Your User Acceptance Testing:
UAT is most vulnerable and critical phase of testing before final release of the software. Delay in any of the previous testing stages means less time for UAT and hence software is deployed without even completing the comprehensive testing. An accurate UAT planning with appropriate use cases and test cases based on real time user scenarios verifies the software rightly according to user requirements and thus planning must be done in the initial phases during requirement analysis.
o Have the Right Team at the Job:
Unskilled testers who are not aware of user’s and business’ requirements perform incorrect UAT causing failure of the software. Hence, to prevent software from any disaster, people who are well-versed with the technology as well as with user requirements must be employed who can identify and detect the issues that may arise and help find an appropriate solution as per user perception.
Bottom Line:
Implementing a software project according to user expectations has never been a trivial or easy task. Great planning, execution and evaluation is required while performing User Acceptance Testing on a project. If carried out with proper expertise and extensive knowledge of project objectives, UAT can discover critical system functionality issues thereby cutting down huge rework costs for businesses as well as ensuring happier and satisfied end-users.
