User Acceptance Testing (also called beta testing) is the last stage of the software development life cycle before moving to production. UAT tests help validate software modifications done against original requirements. This test is done from the customer’s point of view and is used to address performance, implementation, and design issues.
UAT tests help to check issues on the business flow and allow developers to accurately verify user requirements. These tests are important for detecting issues that go unidentified through unit, integration, and function tests. In addition, it helps to weed out bugs due to communication issues.
According to a recent report, the market for software testing exceeded $40 billion in 2020. UAT is one of the major parts of a successful software testing campaign and for fulfilling testing objectives.
Functional experts and end-stage product users perform UAT testing. This is so to ensure that the final result incorporates information from a function standpoint along with a business user perspective.
Steps of UAT Deployment
For successful UAT tests, there are a few steps that you need to follow.
1. Planning
The first step of UAT is planning. Here, the testing team defines the criteria for testing. You also need to gather prerequisites such as business data system specs, results of other stages of testing, intended test results, and site availability.
This information is required to create a comprehensive test. For this, you need to collaborate with process owners, functional leads, and product managers.
2. Scoping and Design
You need to take a look at the scope of the project and design the tests accordingly. This step is important as projects can quickly grow, and all business processes may not require testing.
Once you have scoped the project, you can start plotting the test design. This involves setting project timelines and stages, defining the environment, and assigning tasks to project resources. Different test leads will collaborate for this goal.
3. Execute the test
Using the collected data, you can execute the test and document its results. You need to check if the business requirements are satisfied and analyze any potential risk. Finally, you can also perform defect analysis and note if any changes have to be made to the system. These tickets are then routed back to the development team.
If the results look satisfactory, you can give the go-ahead for the software to be deployed in production. However, you might need to modify your code documentation for live projects.
Advantages of performing UAT deployment
Even though it’s a time-consuming process, UAT helps improve the overall acceptance rate and quality of newly created software products/features. It plays a crucial role in verifying if a solution can satisfy business operations and fulfill end-user cases. It also helps you determine the ROI of the project.
UAT helps to identify usability issues and broken features. This helps to reduce maintenance and recall costs to the products. It’s much cheaper and faster to fix things after UAT than fixing them after being deployed on production. This increases a product’s usability and robustness and helps to gather end-user responses. You can use these responses for subsequent development iterations.
Even though these days most companies prefer to automate their tests, most testers believe that at least one manual test is required before the code is pushed to production. Since UAT mainly focuses on crowd testing, it fulfills an important requirement of software testing methodology: A human perspective. Without UAT, customers might run across uncompleted changes and issues.
Best UAT deployment tools you can use
Once you start testing, you need a way to track your work and ensure that you’re moving in the right direction. UAT testing tools help you outline requirements for a project and ensure that your tests are categorically tagged and documented.
Here are some of the tools you can take to perform UAT.
1. TestMonitor
This tool allows you to consolidate risks and requirements into groups. You can classify requirements by preference and prioritize risks according to their impacts. It manages your tests in one place and allows you to run multiple test cases at once.
It also has a simple UI, and you can easily get started with your test execution. Furthermore, you can generate extensive reports for deriving insights into the projects. They help you understand the project’s growth, along with its strengths and weaknesses.
2. JIRA
Jira’s Kanban board allows you to mark issues and list them into workflows. It also allows you to analyze and filter results and issues based on the risks and requirements.
You can assign tasks to different users and share your test results. This tool can also generate workload and progress reports, as well as provide you with issue trackers.
3. qTest
qTest is a test management tool that allows you to track and organize tests. It also helps you create test-driven workflows for your projects.
It has a DevOps feature called pulse that you can use to automate tests and their communication. You can generate business insights through its analytics engine and schedule meetings for particular issues. You can also use it for manual exploratory testing.
UAT for business
UAT is one of the major steps in the QA process. It helps to fulfill business objectives, rectify defects, and improve user acceptance statistics. Fail to perform this test, and you risk capital loss and damage to your business reputation.
There are many tools in the market you can use for UAT testing. Choose one which matches your business requirements and helps you create a better product. Remember, independent testing by beta users is always better than developer tests. It helps bridge the gap between software development and usage.
