What is User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

Business Analyst Manoj Kumar April 13, 2024 0 Comments

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a type of testing methodology. This is organized for the end users or the stakeholders to ensure that the developed project/feature meets the actual business requirement. It is considered as the final stage of development to ascertain that the product meets the purpose for which it was designed. This involves real users to verify the workability of the system. And is also verifies whether it adheres to the business requirements of the stakeholders.

How is UAT performed?

For performing the UAT, the development team moves the code to a separate environment for testing. This testing environment looks exactly like production. This code is only available to the internal team. The UAT starts with the preparation of various test scenarios, and identifying team members for testing purposes. The participants then move on with the UAT performing the test scenarios and providing feedback.

The 5 steps involved in the UAT process are defined below:

UAT Planning: The first step involved is UAT Planning whereby the master plan for carrying out the UAT Testing is planned. This is to ensure the product/feature meets the business requirements. This defines the entry & exit criteria, various test scenarios, test cases, etc.
Identifying Test Scenarios and Cases: The Test Scenarios is a documentation that defines a list of end-to-end functionality or features that need to be tested. They emphasize what and how to test. While the test cases consist of a defined set of testing steps to be carried out along with the expected output/outcome for each feature to be tested.
Preparing Test Data: UAT is not just about preparing test cases and scenarios, but also executing them to ensure the product. To make this happen, it is advised to use live or authentic data. This ensures that one can get familiarized with the flow of the product/feature and its integration with the database.
Test Execution and Bug Reporting: This step involves testing and evaluating the piece of code shared by the development team in a testing environment and sharing or reporting bugs to the team through any sources.
Confirming Business Objectives Goal Achieved: This is the last step involved in UAT. It involves sending a sign-off email or confirmation to the development team once all the reported bugs/errors are fixed. It also confirms that the product/feature is good to go on the production server. The Business Analyst or the UAT team is responsible for sending this confirmation. The deliverables included in this step are the Test Plan, Test Cases, Test Scenarios, and Defect/Error Log.