Friday, October 19, 2012

The Need For The User Acceptance Testing

By Norman Philips


User acceptance testing is a combination of analysis made by examining various subjects with the aim of determining the legality and quality of a contract. It involves physical, performance and chemical tests. This is all about inquiring on whether an agreement favors both parties and the agreed subjects are met and are up to the standard that are expected to be. This is considered the last phase of finalizing a product before it is availed for the user.

Identifying scenarios to follow and then developing them is among the most crucial activities in UAT. Usually, these scenarios are fetched from process flow diagrams, project charters, business and system requirements. With the aim of seeking assurance, getting to understand the system or application in question is the progress one should take in order to ensure everything is up to the standards of users.

Testing is a priority that should not be disregarded; with it, many things are accomplished as they measure the quality of any system or application erasing doubts that may inconvenience users in future. These inconveniences are such as reduction of the cost of ownership, assurance of certain behaviors, reduction of development and enhancement cost and developing loyalty with consumers just by a word of mouth.

Developing a strategy before commencing on the process is helpful as it ensures quality performance in the tasks scheduled in every steps, and therefore, avoids mistakes. This should be part of the tactics used to assign the most effective plans of following up the whole testing process. Care should be taken as the results are usually either pass or fail.

Testers should do things with a lot of care and avoid taking things without due consideration. This is because test plans, just like other project documentation are liable to get errors. For that reason, it is better when a team is taken to guarantee quality rather than an individual in order for them to work together and combine ideas that will help review available plans and documents. As a result, minimal or no mistakes are made; hence there is provision of reliable data.

Satisfactory feedback from users is an assurance that everything was according to how it was expected to be, showing that its already accepted in the market. A test plan is varied in a pass or fail criteria and has to be conducted precisely so as to prevent errors that will mislead the people relying on the information.Such errors cannot be tolerated as they can bring down a corporation due to their unreliability and incompetency.

It is important to understand targeted users so as to be in a position where one knows their expectations as well as features that one should not leave out. This ensures that they are fully satisfied. However, this calls for competent personnel who will be in a position to vary projects basing on conditions of the real world like most. All the same, risks are also expected to be experienced in the course of the process.

User acceptance testing is not as easy as it might seem to be, it needs a lot of cautious especially in planning, executing and evaluating results. It is one of the most critical and risky test that a project can undergo; therefore, there is always the need to be careful in every step ensuring that everything is supervised and is conducted as planned and documented.




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