User Acceptance Testing (UAT) - Software Testing

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a important phase in software testing where the software is tested in a real-world scenario by end-users to ensure it meets their requirements and functions as expected. Unlike other forms of testing, UAT focuses on validating the software's user-friendliness, functionality, and performance from the user's perspective.

This testing phase helps in identifying any discrepancies between the expected and actual outcomes, ensuring that the software is ready for deployment.

What is user acceptance testing (UAT)?

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) serves the purpose of ensuring that the software meets the business requirements and is ready for deployment by validating its functionality in a real-world environment. It allows end-users to test the software to ensure it meets their needs and operates as expected, helping to identify and fix any issues before the final release. UAT is crucial for quality assurance and customer satisfaction, as it ensures that the software is user-friendly, reliable, and meets all specified criteria.

Acceptance criteria attributes for UAT

• Completeness
• Accuracy
• User-friendliness
• Performance
• Reliability
• Security
• Scalability
• Compatibility

What is the purpose of UAT?

The purpose of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is to identify bugs in software, systems, and networks that may cause problems for users. UAT ensures that software can handle real-world tasks and perform to development specifications. Users are allowed to interact with the software before its official release to see if any features were overlooked or if any bugs exist.

Basic guidelines of UAT: When doing UAT, it is important to test with users in different locations, not just on different devices. It is better to have one person in a separate location rather than testing with people who are already online together. Also, using email is often more reliable than social media, especially for private communication, like delivering services through apps like Signal.

Who performs UAT?

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is typically performed by end-users or clients who will ultimately use the software in their daily operations. These individuals represent the target audience for the software and are responsible for validating whether the software meets their requirements and expectations before it is deployed.

Types of User Acceptance Testing

Below are the 5 types of user acceptance testing:

1. Beta User Acceptance Testing

• Beta UAT means that users who have completed one or more rounds of tests will be shown a popup stating if they are accepted for testing by the new version of Angular2 (a beta release). 
• The application is tested in a natural environment.
• It reduces risks, and failures, and improves the quality of the product through customer feedback.

2. Black Box Testing

• In black box testing, end-users or testers evaluate specific functionalities of the software without knowing the internal workings or code structure.
• Testers focus on how well the software performs its intended tasks from a user perspective, checking inputs and outputs against expected outcomes.
• This type of testing ensures that the software meets user requirements without requiring knowledge of its underlying technical details.

3. Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT)

• Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT) is a software testing technique that evaluates a software application's operational readiness before release or production. 
• The goal of operational acceptance testing is to ensure system and component compliance as well as the smooth operation of the system in its Standard Operating Environment (SOE). 
• OAT Testing (Operational Acceptance Testing) is also known as Operational Readiness Testing (ORT) or Operational Testing. 
• These test cases guarantee there are work processes set up to permit the product or framework to be utilized. 
• This ought to incorporate work processes for reinforcement plans, client preparation, and different support cycles and security checks.

4. Contract Acceptance Testing

• Contract Acceptance Testing refers to the process of testing developed software against predefined and agreed-upon criteria and specifications. 
• When the project team agrees on the contract, they define the relevant criteria and specifications for acceptance.
• Contract acceptance testing involves testing the software against specific criteria and specifications outlined in the project contract or agreement.
• This type of UAT ensures that the delivered software aligns with the agreed-upon terms and conditions between the client and the development team.

5. Regulation Acceptance Testing

• Regulation AT is generally called Compliance AT.
• This sort of affirmation testing is done to guarantee the thing dismisses no rules and rules that are set by the regulating associations of the particular country where the thing is being conveyed. 
• Generally, things that are available from one side of the planet to the other should go through this testing type considering the way that different countries have different standards and rules set by discrete directing associations.

6. Alpha User Acceptance Testing

• Alpha UAT means that your user is tested before they get a hold of the product, so if you're testing users' usage patterns we recommend running an alpha test to ensure it can pass all acceptance tests before the beta gets deployed into production. 
• It enables more rapid validation in early adopters/testers which allows fast adjustments as the software progresses through development with each release cycle toward feature maturity.
• It ensures that there is no opportunity for bugs or exploits once security updates become available based upon adoption levels achieved by products launched later during their life cycle such should be done at least six months after launch.

How to perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

Each type of UAT serves a specific purpose in validating the software's functionality, usability, and compliance before it is deployed for production use.

Here are the steps of Execute User Acceptance Tests

1. Requirements Analysis

This step involves analyses of business requirements. The following documents will be considered and studied thoroughly to identify and develop test scenarios:

• Business Use Cases.
• Business Requirements Document (BRD).
• System Requirements Specification (SRS).
• Process Flow Diagrams. 

2. UAT Test Plan Creation

In this step, a test place is created that will help to outline the test strategy that will be used to verify and ensure that the software meets the expected business requirements. The test plan includes entry criteria, exit criteria, test scenarios, and a test case approach.

3. Identify Test Scenarios

This step involves identifying the test scenarios will respect to the business requirements and creating test cases listing the clear test steps. The test cases should cover the UAT test scenarios. 

4. Create UAT Test Cases

Create UAT test cases in this step that cover most of the test scenarios. Business use cases are the input here to create test cases. 

5. Prepare Test Data

It is considered a best practice to use live data for UAT testing, UAT testers should be familiar with database flow.

6. Test Run

This step involves executing the test cases and reporting the bugs if there are any. Re-test the software once the bugs are fixed. In this step, test management tools can be used for test case execution. 

7. Confirm Business Objectives

In this step, the UAT testers need to sign off the mail after the UAT testing to ensure that the product is good to go for production. Deliverables here are Test Plan, UAT Test Scenarios, Test Cases, Results Log, and Defect Log.

Challenges of User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

Challenges of carrying out User Acceptance Testing include:

• Misreporting Activities: The use and misuse/misreporting activities by potential users can be extremely challenging to control. For example, this issue may arise when a company is not equipped with appropriate information systems.
• Proper Example to demonstrate: Provide an example project to test the validity and reliability, or at least performance, aspects - such as time complexity, resource usage per user, etc. 
• Proper Evaluation: Evaluating how this information is handled by users after a successful acceptance Test needs to be done using common programming tools that provide adequate input data including HTML formatted examples with optional inputs for feedback before/after each iteration.
• Usability: The tester’s job is critical in UAT since they must demonstrate the usability of your product by simulating real-life scenarios. They must also gather information on how your users interact with your product.
• Proper Balance: In addition to inviting users, IT professionals must balance user input and expectations with costs and constraints. For example, some companies limit the number of users per computer during their beta tests. This limits both costs and data collection.
• Limitations of Actions Performed by User: There are also limitations on what actions each user can perform within the program— for example, some programs have an expiration date so that companies do not waste valuable data on unappealing customers.

Need for User Acceptance Testing

• Usability: There is a need for User Acceptance Testing in Software Testing for any product because the software test process relies on users to get used. 
• Feedback Mechanism: The best way to reach users and ensure their confidence is to introduce feedback via usability testing using tools.
• Non-Feasible Cause: There are some reasons why this may not be feasible: A lack – there are many ways one can go about providing user acceptance tests within applications that have complex features - ex "Safari" has been tested extensively by testers since its debut 2 decades ago with little change. The use case will become simple very quickly with proper testing methods. 
• Documentation and Communication: Software testers are looking for good documentation about how code works so that they can verify whether what they are doing does exactly as promised; this ensures an honest test if required or just improves their ability to communicate on behalf but not through tests themselves. It also opens them up to trying something novel (like some new features) until there are problems presented by a lack of functionality. 

Tools for User Acceptance Testing

A few tools used for UAT are listed below:

1. Marker.io

Report visual bugs straightforwardly into your devices, without leaving your site or web application

• It lets users post messages, comments, and events to a "hub" hosted on Google Analytics, with an optional delay between updates which ensures only one message gets sent per second. 
• This delays your data loss by eliminating any accidental user interactions that might interrupt their Web App flow. 

2. FullStory

Enables clients to track and screen every client action. From snaps to page advances, everything is listed consequently.

•  It allows you to visualize user acceptance and rejection through some graphs, similar in functionality to GraphPad but with a lot more flexibility.
• The data can be viewed either via interactive dashboards like Scrum or by drawing on individual parts of it that are then visualized along with actual user feedback using your favorite software It makes this kind of structured test much easier than one would typically think, perhaps even less frustrating.

3. Hotjar

Uncovers the internet-based conduct and voice of your clients. Hotjar provides you with the '10,000-foot view' of how to further develop your site's client experience and execution/transformation rates.

•  This application runs a service that keeps track of an online database of people who have ever viewed your website. 
• The following page summarizes what Hotjars offer and provides tips on creating websites using them. 
• Also, It allows users to run tests from a command line and it does a great job at testing various features that may be added later on.

4. CrazyEgg

A web-based device that screens individual pages from your site, providing you with a breakdown of where various guests have clicked and on what part of the screen.

• The user will need to build a class with all needed methods and return values along its arguments so that this can be easily tested by other developers or clients/users using different APIs like Selenium Server test suites. 
• It comes in two flavors - one which builds on top of Mocha Test Suite i.e. WebDriver, and the other has just built upon MuleTest's framework but adds some custom features such as implementation through Sockets, etc.

5. Qualaroo

Allows users to easily test their Web Apps.

• Qualaroo is a Python library that allows users to easily test their Web Apps. 
• Common data structures can be created in Python which allows us to directly run our tests against different server configurations using QA tools like RSpec and TDDRunner. 

6. Sentry

A web interface that allows users to write acceptance tests on their own

• It's simple but effective and has been accepted into several national standards bodies such as ISO 9001 and ANSI X9-TRIAMS. 
• Sentry provides a web interface that allows users to write acceptance tests and upload them by selecting an option on their dashboard from the toolbar menu with various test cases selected during setup. 

How to Perform User Acceptance Testing

Here it the Proper Guidelines of the Acceptance testing which is Covering in detail

Step 1: Understand Business Requirements and Goals

Begin by reviewing the business requirements and goals to fully understand the project's objectives. Use key documents like Business Use Cases, Process Flow Diagrams, and System Requirements Specification (SRS) to help create test scenarios that align with the project's needs.

Step 2: Create a UAT Plan with Assignments

Develop a UAT plan that outlines the approach to ensure the application meets business requirements. Include entry and exit criteria, detailed test scenarios, and timelines. Make sure to assign specific tests to various parts of the software, simulating real user experiences. Use clear, simple language for instructions, keeping in mind that not all users are technical experts.

Step 3: Identify Test Scenarios and Create Test Cases

Identify key test scenarios based on business processes and design test cases with clear, actionable steps. Focus on functional aspects and UI/UX performance. For example, check if buttons, drop-downs, and sliders work properly, if overlapping elements interfere with scrolling, and if all CSS styles display correctly.

Step 4: Prepare Test Data

Use real, live data for testing, but make sure to scramble it for privacy and security. This is best handled by professional testers who understand how to replicate real user behavior.

Step 5: Execute Tests and Track Results

Run the test cases and document any issues you encounter. Once bugs are fixed, re-test to verify the issues are resolved. Pay close attention to feedback from testers, as they may use simple, non-technical language. Use feedback templates to organize and present responses clearly.

Step 6: Confirm Business Goals Are Achieved

Finally, ensure the project meets its business objectives. Verify that the application delivers what was initially promised and addresses the business needs effectively.

Exit Criteria for User Acceptance Testing

There are some Exit Criteria required to be met for User Acceptance Testing. They include:

• Confidence: A high level of confidence that the proposed user has enough knowledge, experience, and skill set to perform at least one task effectively.
• Proper Execution: Where tests show users can contribute fully to existing tasks successfully using their expertise. All three terms represent different levels with each being less than 50% when compared to full-time professionals in this area. When you use these two criteria as input your goal is to gain support from others who have achieved similar results through other research methods instead of focusing on just learning how important it was once they got there. 
• Lesser Defects: After analyzing the test results, project managers should be able to draw some conclusions based on what they've found. For example, if there are more errors during testing than expected, this can be taken as a positive sign. It shows that the program is easy to learn and use which is a necessary condition for successful implementation. In addition, this means that their project objectives are understandable and easily implemented by end users. In other words, their business process works satisfactorily. If there are fewer errors than expected, this can also be taken as a positive sign. It indicates that implementing certain security measures early in the development lifecycle will go a long way in reducing unexpected errors during testing.
• No Critical Defects: After drawing these conclusions, project managers should ensure that all critical defects found during testing are resolved within one month after launch. This allows them time to notify users about any lingering issues and rectify any critical bugs before releasing the final copy to end users. Doing so will increase the likelihood of satisfied users and increase early adopter interest in your product.
• Proper UAT: A well-coordinated UAT helps software developers identify problems early on in their projects- thereby reducing overall development costs and timeline delays. Hence, performing UAT effectively requires a lot of planning and commitment from every developer involved in a project. The developer performing the test should analyze each scenario carefully before moving on to the next test step. Doing so will help them produce a quality product that satisfies customer needs and meets project objectives at the earliest possible time.

User Acceptance Testing vs System Testing

Here are the Difference between User Acceptance Testing vs System Testing

Acceptance Testing vs V-Model

Below is the difference between acceptance testing and V-Model:

Conclusion

In conclusion, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and the V-Model differ significantly in their approach to software testing. UAT focuses on customer feedback, occurs after each system test iteration, and tests features based on customer requirements with regular customer interaction. Each method has its unique benefits, making them suitable for different testing needs and project requirements.