What are the phases of UAT?

Author: Mariaa Martin

The UAT testing process is taken up before planning to release the software into the market. This step ensures whether the software is complete according to the functional specifications defined by the product owner or not.

Following are the four phases of UAT:

1. Planning: Following are the key points that need to be considered in the planning phase:

  • The list of business objectives needs to be prepared in order to be tested
  • The acceptance criteria need to be defined
  • The testing team needs to be selected
  • Test data needs to be prepared. All the software’s functional scenarios should be covered by the test data in real-world usage
  • In order to conduct test execution successfully, a
Uattest plan needs to be prepared.

  1. Design: the tests are designed in this phase. The information collected in the planning phase needs to be used to design the tests.
  2. Execution: The test needs to be executed using the test data and then the results need to be documented. The system defects are resolved and then re-tested again
  3. The business goals should be confirmed: The business requirements should be met by the software product and then it is ready for production purposes. The overall UAT process deliverables are test cases, UAT scenarios, test plan, test results and defect log.

The primary objective for conducting UAT successfully is to take into consideration a few key requirements, which are as follows:

  • Business requirements need to be provided to the testing team
  • The system must be error-free and fully developed. From a business point of view, there are low-priority errors through which the business process does not get affected
  • Unit testing, Integration testing and System testing should be completed first. The flaws that have been reported are already evaluated and fixed before UAT
  • The focus should be on setting up a UAT environment

Following are a few key tips that need to be considered for conducting UAT successfully:

  • A production-like test environment needs to be set up to conduct UAT in a productive and rewarding manner
  • During the requirement analysis and design phase, a clear test acceptance plan needs to be designed
  • Train the testers on the developed business requirements. This will, in turn, help in increasing the success of UAT.