User Acceptance Testing: Trends and Best Testing Practices

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is considered to be an obligatory step of any app development process. As a rule, it is performed in the final step of testing, where the real users have an opportunity to examine the product. They check whether the application can perform its main functions in real-life conditions. The QA experts also validate modifications that were made against original requirements. 

The main question that QA professionals need to answer during UAT is whether the software can be accepted or not. It is also worth mentioning that this type of QA process is also known as beta testing. 

When Should You Start The User Acceptance Test Process? 

UAT is usually performed after all the other obligatory types of testing are done. Commonly, it is launched before the product or service goes live or before it should be accepted by the customer. In other words, the QA experts initiate UAT after the app successfully passed all the stages of the quality assurance process.

Why Do You Need UAT?

Mostly, the QA process is held by the developers, the in-house QA team, internal stakeholders, and other professionals who check the application against functional requirements. They check all the parameters only in the technical and usability areas. However, the product might also have some business or niche specifications that are familiar only to end-users. 

Therefore, UAT is designed to validate whether the app meets the business and marketing demands before it becomes available to the mass audience or the customer. It is important to note that UAT uses only live data and should be performed only in real environments without using virtual machines or other emulators.  

In case you don’t want to get huge losses because of facing software issues after the release, UAT is a must. The fact is that fixing bugs and errors before the release will cost you much less than solving all the technical and business issues after your product goes live. Not to mention the potential reputation damage in case something goes wrong. 

Who Are The UAT Testers?

Performing UAT is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. It requires having a perfect knowledge of testing procedures and a complete understanding of the product. Moreover, UAT is about hiring functional experts, business users, beta users, and other industry professionals to provide the most detailed results. 

Many companies are looking for the most cost-effective ways to perform UAT to minimize their expenses. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend tons of time searching,  hiring, and training several experts since there is a much more convenient and reliable solution. So, who can perform a bunch of various tasks for you? These are crowd testers, the qualified experts who can perform UAT for your company in a fast, productive, and cost-effective way. 

UAT: Top Stages 

The best strategy for performing UAT successfully is to split the process into 3 major steps. The first one is planning, the second is the design and the final one is execution. 

Planning 

The first thing you need to come up with is the role of your QA experts in the UAT. There are two basic options most companies usually choose:

• Assistance. The QA team provides UAT users with all the necessary data about using the product or service. Moreover, the team should always keep in touch with UAT experts if some bugs or issues are detected. 
• Performance. It is another test approach example you should know about. This way, the UAT users will come up with the fields, functions, and aspects of the product or service that should be checked. 

It is also important to create a plan and choose a user acceptance testing methodology before you start the design process. It will be great to take into consideration all the testing parameters, including dates, protocols, and environment for the final examination. 

The key activities on this point might look as follows:

• Choosing a UAT approach
• Choosing the users who will be responsible for the testing
• Picking up the environments for performing tests
• Identifying data requirements
• Choosing the communication channels

UAT Design 

The QA team creates a list of UAT test cases. It will be very convenient to create a specially developed testing template, where the team specifies all the necessary parameters and comments to the UAT process. For your convenience, it might be a comprehensive and detailed user acceptance test checklist. Here, the QA team can specify some acceptance requirements, as well as add fields for test results, and comments. To perform a software acceptance test, the UAT professionals should have all the necessary input data and criteria. 

The major activities on this step might look like this:

• Documenting business scenarios
• Test data is chosen
• All the necessary accesses are given

Execution 

One of the most effective execution techniques is a Go/ No Go system. To put it short, it is a set of tests on whether the function or option will satisfy the user. As a result, an acceptance decision is made. 

The main activities in this phase might look as follows:

• The execution of all the pre-designed scenarios 
• Detecting all the issues with the help of the test management utility

The Role Of Crowdtesting In The UAT Process

Why do most small and large companies prefer hiring crowd testers for UAT? What are the true advantages offered by this type of service? Using crowd testing is considered to be one of the most effective ways to perform the UAT process. It is a powerful solution that allows receiving UAT capabilities almost immediately. Moreover, crowd testing can offer even more benefits you should know:

• Mirror your audience. You can easily choose the testing parameters to cover users from different audiences with a more diverse user base and many global locales. 
• Easily manageable. Keeping in touch with crowd testers is incredibly convenient and easy because you get an assigned project manager to manage the entire project. 
• No negative consequences. You can show off the pre-release versions of your software to crowd testers. Presenting these versions to customers is mostly a bad idea since it can harm the company’s reputation. Using crowdsourced testing services is always safe and reliable. 
• Only up-to-date and true-to-life facts and data. Crowdtesters are unbiased and will never tell you lies about how good your application is. 
• Various types of tests available. Crowdtesters can perform almost all types of tests and UAT. 
• Significantly reduced cost, faster execution time, and reduced personnel from your own company

Additionally, crowdsourced testing companies have a large number of QA professionals that can work on your project in different countries with different devices, carriers, and tools. They can offer a diverse experience of using your software that is much more versatile than UAT carried by your in-house QA team. 

Want to know more about crowd testing opportunities? Contact us at sales@ubertesters.com