If your business involves developing software or other applications that need to provide specific outcomes for clients and customers, needless to say, in that case, your success will be determined by your ability to deliver those results.
If your business continues developing programs that perform below expectations, you’ll soon lose business to the competition. In addition, your business reputation can suffer badly, which will be very challenging to rebuild.
This is why user acceptance testing is an integral part of businesses involved in developing software programs. When changes are necessary to be made, one cannot risk leaving success to chance. Instead, they need a reliable process to make the changes your market demands.
What is user acceptance testing?
User acceptance testing is the final stage of any software development lifecycle process. During this stage, the actual users test the software to see if it is capable of performing the necessary tasks that it is supposed to perform in real-world scenarios based on the requirements of the customers or the clients.
The primary goal of user acceptance testing is to validate the requested changes against the original specifications.
Who performs user acceptance testing?
In most cases, user acceptance testing requires both functional experts and business users.
Apparently, the former are the experts when we consider the technical side of software development. However, for successful user acceptance testing, business users are still crucial. At the end of the day, they are the only ones who understand what the result of the change must look like. The program can be entirely functional and still fail since it does not meet the requirements of the change specification.
This becomes especially true while testing applications. During user acceptance testing, it is necessary for end-users and subject matter experts to determine whether implementing the requested change produces the necessary result without adversely affecting the overall processes.
For instance, performing a technical software test could verify that a new purchase order has been expanded to include a new web order subfield. With the help of a business process approach, one can easily ascertain whether the same purchase order works the same throughout the purchase-to-pay process.
The latest purchase order format should properly work from initial creation through approval, receipt, invoicing and accounting.
Why is user acceptance testing necessary?
Without comprehensive user acceptance testing, the requested changes may appear complete when in-fact work is still necessary. The only method available to recognize such problems is after the platform is released when clients/customers discover it themselves.
This will affect the software development company in two ways. Firstly, they will need to perform more comprehensive user acceptance testing, and secondly, their reputation will be affected. Moreover, consumers will feel like they have invested in the wrong development firm, which releases buggy programs.
About the Company:
Opkey is a no-code continuous test automation platform that is easy to use and built for change. With the help of automated processes and testing, Opkey empowers businesses to keep pace with release schedules, reduce risk and ensure business continuity.