User Acceptance Testing Checklist

This is a 4-part series on User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

• Part 1: What is User Acceptance Testing and its Best Practices
• Part 2: How to Prepare for User Acceptance Testing?
• Part 3: User Acceptance Testing Challenges & UAT Environment Examples
• Part 4: UAT Checklist

UAT Checklist

To be able to perform seamless user acceptance testing, it is important to ensure that the mentioned test stages are thoroughly covered as part of the UAT for best results.

Initiating the user acceptance testing project

This is the first stage that helps to prevent any future issues. If there are several things to be kept in mind and you don’t know what to do initially, here are the stages/checklist of preparation:

• Make a list and contact your future stakeholders
• Discuss with end-users the objectives, aims, and key deliverables of the project
• Pick a single point of contact for testing in the team
• Ascertain all the documents and the UAT resources
• Create the project template and gear up UAT training for the team

Planning the User Acceptance Testing and define the methodology

At this point, make a strategy that holds all the information collected at the previous stage to help you plan the execution and formulate the final results. At this step, make sure to-

• Recognize to the overall UAT methodology for evaluating the right UAT solution
• Explicitly define the specifications of business and clarify them with the team
• Assess various existing documentation to serve as a reference for test basis
• Ensure that various business requirements are included and documented.

User acceptance testing design

This stage clearly states the test points and verifies that the earlier stages are delivered successfully. At this step, make sure to-

• Set clear expectations at the beginning of UAT
• List test conditions and approaches to kick off UAT
• Define the criteria as well as the test cases based on the existing one
• List testing scenarios and prepare test cases
• Ensure that the test cases consist of all the business requirements

User acceptance testing execution

While comprehensive preparation is the key, things can still go wrong during UAT kick-off. Therefore, the project has to be monitored, led, and tracked on all stages to achieve the UAT timeline. At this stage, make sure-

• Users give enough time to execute the UAT test scripts 
• Your team executes the testing as per the defined test plan and strategy
• All defects are reported accurately and promptly 
• Conduct meetings daily to communicate status and address concerns as they come up
• Schedule dedicated time for defect resolution and re-testing of functionality

UAT exit

This is the final phase and helps produce a transparent and detailed analysis. A powerful sign off on the UAT execution is critical to go live, and to ensure this, make sure to-

• Generate a clear test exit report offering details of executed tests, bug raised, and existing status of all defects
• Evaluate and accordingly take a call to officially close the UAT phase.

User Acceptance Testing in Agile Environment

The agile environment is typically more dynamic, and in an agile world, business users will be fully involved throughout the project sprints, and the project would be accordingly enhanced based on the feedback loops from them.

In Agile teams, the entire responsibility of maximizing the product's value is with the product owner. The product owner here represents all stakeholders, including customers/users, and is the only authorized entity mentioned in the definition of user acceptance testing.

The product owner must work in close collaboration with stakeholders to understand their specific expectations and help the scrum team give feedback about the product.

The feedback that is received during sprint demo and UAT is collated and added back to the product backlog, which is reviewed and prioritized constantly. Overall, in an agile world, the business users are typically more close to the project, and unlike the traditional waterfall projects, they evaluate the same for its use on a more frequent basis.

If you are a Product Manager or Designer who would like to get a sneak peak at new features being built and need a trusted demo environment to perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) without a hassle, you should take a look at 👉🏽 User Acceptance testing (UAT) with Release Ephemeral Environments, With Release’s Ephemeral Environments, it’s possible to view a developer’s changes at any time or any place. You don’t need to worry about having the proper environment variables in place or running any code locally.

Conclusion

For user acceptance testing to be effective, it is important to view it as validation instead of verification. If approached right, user acceptance testing helps reduce the likelihood of issues that typically happen in web development projects, which reduces the amount of work and effort required in development and maintenance.