Review and manage
In an ideal testing process, the tests will have been developed to provide 100% coverage of the areas and scenarios needing testing. These will all have been executed correctly and passed, even if the process has undergone several cycles.
At the same time, users will not have significant questions or concerns and will have provided positive feedback about the software’s quality and readiness. Upon completing this, all shareholders will have agreed that the changes will positively impact the organization and achieve project goals.
Reaching this position is largely dependent on the factors previously considered and implemented before this point; however, you will also need clarity of the project metrics to determine when this project status is approaching or arriving.
This data will need to have been collected as the project has progressed and cannot be realistically constructed in retrospect, so it needs to be reinforced in the test management platform and methods from the start.
Assess overall status and readiness.
Once the test has concluded, we recommend following these 6 steps:
6 Steps
- What are the test passes against failures? Any outstanding tests?
- Are there any outstanding issues?
- Are there any outstanding defects?
- Has there been progress made against key metrics?
- Ensure the central system is updated.
- Provide a feedback loop to users on the issue status.
Automation build strategy
Automation of tests can be extremely useful for UAT. It provides the most value in areas that have already ‘passed’ user inspection but will need retesting or re-execution either as part of a subsequent cycle in this project or a future release cycle where it forms the basis of regression testing. Automation can also provide value in data loading to support testing activities.
While manual testing is essential for successful UAT, having users repeatedly test the same software will lead to less accurate results. Users will become tired of repeating the same hypothetical task over and over again. However, if automated, UAT managers can still validate and accept the results without users repeating tests and still gain valuable test assets for future use.
To succeed, automation must be relatively easy to create, maintain and understand. By delegating some repetitive aspects of the testing scope to automation time, users’ time is freed up substantially. Planning for automation at the start of the testing process can redirect this freed-up time to exploratory testing.
Things to consider
- Can past manual tests be converted to automation?
- Where is the greatest gain?
- Is the process knowledge available and captured?
- What future requirements for regression testing can be addressed now?
- Consider intensive, repetitive manual tests or tasks (such as data loading) for early automation.
- Ensure you have selected an automation solution to match team skills and rate of progress.
- Are there configuration and environment tasks that will need to be repeated when moved to production, captured in automation for consistency?
As with any testing process, not all phases need to be implemented within every project, but each should be considered to achieve the best possible outcome.
We are covering the whole approach to UAT in a step-by-step guide. You can read the next part, Repeat, or any of the other sections here:
Review and manage
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