Planning: Winter 2017
Execution: Spring 2017
Description: User Acceptance Test (UAT) is the process of completing the final validation of required business functions and flow of the system by end users based on business requirements. It is also an opportunity for the project to engage additional sets of end users in the project prior to deployment and test the effectiveness of the training and documentation.
UAT is designed to validate that the high-level business requirements are met from a source outside of the project team. UAT focuses on the understanding from the user community whether or not the system is built to specifications, training enables the user to be successful, and the end product provides value.
The perceived efficacy of UAT is based on the assumption that, if the software is demonstrated to work as intended during a simulation of normal use, it will perform the same when deployed in the production environment.
Scope:
- Require user community representatives to independently validate that their business requirements are met by the system, and that the system will function as intended in its intended environment
- Provide user community representatives the opportunity to accept the software as supporting their business needs, prior to its deployment in the production environment
- Allow user community representatives to review the user documentation prepared to support the software release
- Utilize production training approach to train the acceptance testers.
- Data in the UAT environment should be representative of the variability in true production data in order to provide UAT testers with the flexibility to execute a wide range of real-life business scenarios.