Understanding User Acceptance Testing Value and Best Practices
Tags: user, acceptance, testing
Published: 2024-02-08 06:29:17

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User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the application development cycle’s second to last pre-release phase. UAT’s main goal is to confirm that the software is operating as planned. UAT, as opposed to developer-performed functional testing, guarantees that innovations and upgrades in your application satisfy your business goals. End users commonly do UAT. 

**User Acceptance Testing: What Is It**?

User Acceptance Testing, or UAT, is the final phase of testing software before a product is made accessible to customers. It is a process whereby actual users, or users’ representatives, evaluate how well the software functions to ensure that it meets their needs and expectations. UAT is a crucial stage since it allows for the identification and rectification of issues that might have gone undiscovered during earlier testing phases.

**User Acceptance Testing: Its Value**

UAT makes sure that the program meets the needs and expectations of the users. This aids in producing an item that is approachable and prone to being well-received.

UAT frequently discloses issues that would not have come to light during previous testing phases, such as system or functional testing. If not resolved, these problems may be serious and may have a severe effect on the user experience.

By resolving bugs and flaws before the software is made available to a larger user base, UAT helps to reduce the incidence of post-release issues, which may be expensive and time-consuming to resolve.

Positive UAT strengthens the confidence of users, project managers, and developers in the quality of the software. It ensures the software’s reliability and stability.
Fixing issues during UAT often takes less money and time than doing it after the item has been released. UAT aids in avoiding costly rework.

**User Acceptance Testing – The Best Practices**

**Know end users**: The UAT should be conducted by the staff who will be using the program the most often. However, manual testers as well as functional consultants typically end up doing it. This is a problem since end users are more familiar with their everyday routines and will know how the program should operate in practice.

**Formulate test strategy**: For your UAT to be successful, you must have a test strategy that details the scope of the testing, including what will and won’t be tested. Test goals, instructions for who should take certain tests, and other crucial information should all be included in your test strategy.

**Create user stories and acceptance standards**: For an effective UAT, real-world test scripts are essential. You should write thorough user stories as well as acceptance criteria before writing a test script. You can start writing test scripts as soon as user stories and related acceptance criteria are specified.
Use the no-code test automation platform if you plan to rely on business users to build test scripts since they are frequently untrained.

**Create smooth communication standards**: The UAT process might be delayed and testing teams can become confused as a result of vague reporting. Bugs discovered during UAT must be reported with enough of specific information that is simple for development teams to analyze and comprehend. Business people may easily take screenshots or film videos and provide these insights to development teams using test automation platforms.

**Conclusion**

Through automating routine testing processes, boosting test coverage, and expediting the testing process, Opkey, a top test automation tool, supports UAT efforts. With features like no-code test automation, test discovery, reporting, and analysis, Opkey’s end-to-end test automation platform simplifies and automates UAT. Opkey makes it simple to build and run test cases, freeing up your testing team to concentrate on important situations and user-specific procedures.