A while ago, Joy wrote a post about how to prep for a UAT (User Acceptance Testing). I would like to add to that, with my own experience, for what is needed in order to prep for a UAT.
I had a client once who was building an internal software product, failed their UAT, went back to fix the issues (some of which were UI related), and needed to repeat UAT in order to proceed with beta testing and ultimately a release. In order to prepare for UAT and ensure its success, the team created a checklist which was updated throughout the process through the knowledge of what worked and what didn’t work.
The columns:
Is the task required? What’s the task status? (eg. Not Started, In Progress, Completed) What’s the target completion date? What’s the activity?
The tasks:
| 1. Identify UAT business stakeholder |
| 2. Business stakeholder IDs UAT testers |
| 3. BA creates training materials to help the business users when testing the system. These will be updating during testing |
| 4. QA writes test scripts |
| 5. BA reviews test scripts with QA to ensure they are correct and written appropriately |
| 6. BA completes master data to test |
| 7. BA assigns test scripts to business testers |
| 8. BA reviews test scripts with business testers to ensure users are capable of executing test scripts |
| 9. BA works with IT to ensure the system on which UAT will be conducted is clean and has no existing data or tests from QA |
| 10. BA creates Roles & Responsibilites Matrix, including all business testers. This will show what the business tester will be capable of testing and his permissions within the system |
| 11. BA creates testing schedule and allocates days/times when business testers will be needed to test |
| 12. BA reviews the testing schedule with the buiness stakeholder and it is approved |
| 13. BA creates manual for how to use the defect management system and explains what is a defect (this will reduce the “System doesn’t work” type of defect) |
| 14. BA ensures business users have access to defect management system |
| 15. BA works with each business tester to ensure the defect management system is on their computer and they can login |
| 16. BA reserves UAT room and completes room logistics (network access, projector access, etc) |
| 17. BA communicates with business testers where the UAT room is located |
| 18. Buy snacks for the business testers |
| 19. Plan End of UAT party |
| 20. Plan Go/No-Go Meeting, which determines whether UAT passed and if the application will proceed to release, alpha testing, etc |
The time frame of completion for each task is dependent on the size of the project and how long it will take to complete each task. For the project I was on, I had roughly about 50 testers and touched every department of a F500 company. The timeline considers the magnitude of the project. If your project will have 5 testers and is fairly simple, you’ll clearly have a very different timeline than what I had.
Try this checklist on your next UAT and post the results!
