2. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
3. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
4. What is Acceptance Testing?
Formal testing with respect to:
• user needs,
• requirements and
• business processes
conducted to determine:
• whether or not a system satisfies the acceptance criteria
• whether or not the customer to accept the system.
5. Acceptance testing is…
Other Types of Testing: the intent is principally to reveal errors
Acceptance Testing
1. Measures compliancy to business objectives;
2. Expose business logic problems that unit testing and system
testing have missed out
Acceptance testing – considered as a “validation” process.
6. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
8. Types of Acceptance Testing
• Process of verifying that a solution works for the user.
• It is NOT System testing!
• Focus is on the journey and not on technical or system
User Acceptance Testing
9. Types of Acceptance Testing
• Checks operational readiness
• Non – functional testing.
• Acceptance of the system by the operational team, including:
• Testing of backup/ restore;
• Disaster recovery;
• User management;
• Maintenance tasks;
• Data load and migration tasks;
• Periodic checks of security vulnerabilities;
Operational Acceptance Testing
10. Types of Acceptance Testing
• Performed against a contract’s acceptance criteria for
producing custom–developed software.
• Acceptance Criteria should be defined in the contract.
• Regulation AT - performed against any regulations that must
be adhered to, such as
• government,
• legal or
• safety regulations.
Contract and regulation Acceptance Testing
11. Types of Acceptance Testing
• to get feedback from potential or existing customers before
the software product goes live.
• Alpha testing - performed at the developing organization’s site
but not by the developing team.
• Beta testing (or field testing) is performed by customers or
potential customers at their own locations.
Alpha and Beta Testing
12. Acceptance Testing
Acceptance Testing – Entry criteria
1. Business requirements must be available;
2. Application Code should be fully developed;
3. All previous Test phases should be completed;
4. No Show Stoppers or Major defects;
5. Regression Testing - Done;
6. AT Environment - Ready;
14. Acceptance Testing
Test Cases - approaches:
• Requirements–based
• Business process (workflow) or user scenario
• Data–driven
15. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
17. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
22. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
23. The status of IT Projects
According to CHAOS Report - 2015
25. Acceptance Testing - challenges
Challenge 1
“I was too busy to complete the testing”:
• Users do the acceptance testing in addition to their busy
schedules as the acceptance testing is the final testing phase;
How to avoid it?
• Start as early as possible
26. Acceptance Testing - challenges
Challenge 2
“It’s too late in the project, it doesn’t matter what issues I find –
the team will never incorporate our feedback”:
• acceptance testing is the last phase when the system is
“almost” ready to go live
• acceptance testing can easily turn out to be a formality
How to avoid it?
• Users test on their own with less devotion to the project
27. Acceptance Testing - challenges
Challenge 3
“I am here, what do you want me to do?”:
• Lack of understanding how the system works
• users join late and not prepared
• Experienced and Skilled people needed
How to avoid it?
• Users should be motivated to test on their own with test cases
they have created
28. Acceptance Testing - challenges
Other reasons why it fails:
1. No collaboration
2. Focusing on how, not on what
3. Expecting acceptance tests to be a full regression suite
4. Focusing on tools
5. No management buy–in
29. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
30. Guidelines to success
Important factors:
• Real world scenarios
• derived directly from how the user operates
• built by involving users from the very beginning of the project
• As users add input, they define requirements that might have
been missed
• Fresh eyes
• have little understanding of the product,
• have no experience working with the dev and test team
• not worried about protecting relationships.
• provide real, open and honest feedback
31. Guidelines to success
Important factors:
• Client engagement
• projects are often running behind schedule
• clients are also busy
• it is very important to organize the process so that it is very easy
for the client to engage them effectively.
• Collaboration platform
• client and testers exchange information.
• not only accelerating testing but also build a better product.
32. Guidelines to success
Other success factors
1. Staff to test – choose carefully!
2. Make time to test!
3. Create new test cases!
4. AT environment: identical, but separate from the production!
5. Realistic Test data – not “Typical”!
6. Smoke test before user has access to it. Always!
7. Avoid confusion with “regression”
33. Agenda
• What is Acceptance Testing?
• Types of Acceptance Testing
• Areas of Application
• AT as part of different lifecycles
• Challenges
• Guidelines to success
• Outsourcing of AT
35. Outsourcing Acceptance Testing
Managers:
• are reluctant to lose control
• strongly believe that the internal team has a better
understanding of the end-user requirements.
Practice, though, shows that outsourcing the acceptance phase is
leading to a better output.
Why not outsource Acceptance Testing?
36. Certifications
iSQI® (the International Software Quality Institute) provides over
30 certifications in the following IT-areas
(including ISTQB, IREB, UXQB and more): www.isqi.org
iSQI
Requirements–based: con – if based only on requirements, test cases can carry over the defects of the business requirements. Also, if the requirements are incomplete or incorrect, the test cases would also be incomplete and incorrect;
Business process (workflow) or user scenario – the downside of this approach is that the data related testing is missing;
Data–driven – usually as extensions and typically automated with tools. The con is they focus heavily on the data side and miss out the process and business side;
Real world scenarios – derived directly from how the user operates and not by generic ideas based on “everybody knows” style.
They can be built by involving users from the very beginning of the project.
As users add input, they define requirements that might have been missed
Fresh eyes – the groupthink may impact quality, usability and customer experience, thus buggy software release, losses and unhappy clients. Fresh eyes have little understanding of the product, have no experience working with the development and testing team and very importantly, not worried about protecting relationships. They will provide real, open and honest feedback
Requirements will change – prepare!
Staff to test – choose carefully!
Have acceptance testers check for usability issues early–on!
Make time to test!
Establish a shared Test Management Tool!
Create new test cases!
Acceptance Test environment: identical, but separate from the production environment!
Realistic Test data – not “Typical”!
Acceptance testing should occur early and often. Regardless of process, the planning phase of Acceptance Testing needs to be included in the master project plan and scheduled across the life of the project.
A QA should perform a smoke test on the environment before the customer/ end user has access to it. Always!
Acceptance testing is often confused with “regression” by the client
Reasons for better output:
External team definitely adds value in terms of completing the test coverage
They have a more objective view of the business scenarios that may occur in that industry
External party can help to test the performance of the application during peak periods