Pragmatic Outsourcing

A Few Words on UAT

This post continues with the topic I started a few months ago – using QA to prevent serious issues with offshore deliverables. In particular I’d like to cover User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

For many software professional UAT has a very clear definition and lucid goals and objectives, yet this understanding at most foundational level varies a lot between different professionals and organizations. In professional services engagements UAT I had pleasure to participate in UAT used to be a final sign off by buyer of the software deliverable. In my new organization UAT has been playing a key role in SDLC acting as a final gate before release to production. In many organizations UAT is interpreted as a smoke test performed by users at each milestone to make sure that the users’ requirements were properly understood.

Whatever the test performed in your organization with a UAT label it is probably an important part of your SDLC and I am not disputing its value. I am also not an abbreviation fanatic demanding that UAT term is only used its original purpose. I think it would be quite important to cover participation of users in the acceptance of deliverables from offshore, and just for the sake of this post let me call those testing activities UAT.

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October 13, 2009 Posted by Nick Krym | Managing Offshore Engagements | Offshore Tips | Leave a Comment