Challenges and Best Practices for User Acceptance Testing

Delivering the best user experience is the top priority of all software service providers. However, ensuring 100% bug-free software is something very challenging. To ensure bug-free software, QA teams need to use a reliable test automation tool and implement certain software tests. What if we ask the users to test the sample software for some time and provide the right feedback? Here User Acceptance testing comes into the picture. 

UAT is practiced by the intended customer in sync with the functional experts to provide QA teams with feedback Since real-time users test the software, they can easily identify the bugs that can get into production unnoticed. UAT is not as easy as it seems and has many challenges which we might not have thought of. So let’s explore the real-time challenges with User acceptance testing and also learn the best practices to avoid them.

Challenges of UAT

Though User acceptance testing is the best solution to provide the best customer experience, yet the QA team might come across some possible challenges like the following:

Poor test planning. 

Poor test planning might lead to delays in test execution.  By the time it reaches the final stage, QA teams face a lot of pressure to complete the tests. This results in overlooking minute bugs. Hence, proper test planning is a must for the best UAT performance. 

Bad choice of UAT users 

It’s imperative to select the right UAT testers. It would be best to go for experienced professionals in order to get rid of the minutest bugs. Secondly, the training of testers must be done properly, otherwise, they won’t be able to enter the correct test results or prepare the correct reports.

Testing environment and deployment 

For the best UAT performance, agility is important. Using the same environment for other stages of testing and UAT testing could lead to software dependencies. Organizations should use a different environment for UAT.

Communication gaps 

Gaps in communication between the end users /UAT and testing teams could cause problems leading to delays with reporting of bugs or testing scenarios. Teams need to ensure best collaboration practices to get everything in order without exceeding the time bandwidth. 

UAT best practices

Some of the best practices of user acceptance testing include the following:

Gather information: One of the measures for the best UAT performance is collecting the correct data along with following the correct process for testing. The combination of these two actions will provide the best results.

Properly identify the target audience: This helps identify a reliable UAT Team as they know what to look for and how to provide useful feedback.

Understand the project scope: Specific processes may not need to be tested, so data can be collected from only the processes needed.

Design. Different testing steps can be assigned to different users. Test cases should contain details such as specify procedures, expected results, and conditions a tester may need to verify.

Confirm business objectives: Once the testing is done and bugs are resolved, a sign-off confirmation should be in place to indicate that changes meet business requirements.

Conclusion: 

To provide the best customer experience, UAT is the best solution. To execute UAT testing properly, organizations need to ensure that the best practices are followed. Before anything else, we must identify the bottlenecks of UAT and enable our testing team to follow the best practices as a result.