User acceptance is a type of testing performed by the Client to certify the system with respect to the requirements that

was agreed upon. This testing happens in the final phase of testing before moving the software application to Market or Production environment. The main purpose of this testing is to validate the end to end business flow. It does NOT focus on the cosmetic errors, Spelling mistakes or System testing. This testing is carried out in separate testing environment with production like data setup. It is a kind of black box testing where two or more end users will be involved. History: User acceptance testing involves business or subject matter experts in both required and expected usually, the actual end user of the product rather than the manager who may have been more involved in the project. The business expects to accept the product rather than simply assuming the final product will be fit for purpose. This additional involvement is reflected in the software life cycle in all stages prior to user acceptance testing with a particular focus during the analysis phase when the requirements are agreed. The benefit is that there are no surprises when the final product is released. Any surprise can be addressed before the final product is released for operations. The downside of this activity is that business users involvement is greater but this can be managed through proper planning to ensure that all the business requirements are fulfilled. Objectives: The major purpose of UAT is to ensure that the system can be implemented for business operations.Business requirements are verified rather than performing system testing. The actual users and all the stakeholders are involved in this activity to understand the system that how it will work and to ensure the business requirements. Business Analysts Role in UAT: The business analyst will be involved in UAT to a degree, depending on the project. At a minimum, he/she will provide guidance to system behavior and identify scenarios which would be suitable to test. They may be requested to review the test scripts and objectives and, in some cases, may actually coordinate and manage the execution of the user acceptance testing. The business analyst should do no more than co-ordination as it is critical that the business has ownership of the tests and, hence, believe that passing business acceptance testing genuinely means the product is fit for purpose. This will depend on the company culture, the specific project and whether there are any resourcing issues.

Planning is important for UAT: A UAT Plan should be created for the verification of business requirements. All the scenarios to be verified during UAT should be documented properly. Following are some important factors that should be considered while extracting scenarios. Requirements Documents. Straight or happy path scenarios should be central part of UAT High risk scenarios, such as, product performance.

In addition to scenarios identification, required resources and all the stakeholders involved in this activity should be mentioned in a document. Also, on the basis of the selected scenarios and analysis, UAT pass/fail criteria should be mentioned. Principles: Although UAT is not similar to system testing, but it is equally rigorous in what is tested and what will be the formal acceptance criteria and process. Project objectives, business benefits and critical success factors should all be used to help define acceptance criteria. Users and business stakeholders should be involved in decision making and planning throughout UAT as they will become natural champions for the new system if they are fully involved and consulted. It is critical that the business is fully engaged in the planning and design of the user acceptance test and the production of acceptance criteria. Since UAT is the last phase before the product is live, so understanding of the product and problems uncovered at this stage are important in making the decision to go live with the product.