Before you can sell a product to your target customers, you need to make sure that users can use it in the way they want to use it. This is where User Acceptance Testing comes in handy (uat company). You will learn what it is, when and how to use it in this article.
Quality Assurance, QA, is a complex quality assurance process that covers all stages of software product development in a company. QA involves examining processes and identifying all conditions and circumstances that may affect the quality of development and the final product.
The essential knowledge starts with the fact that a person who decides to learn software testing (QA) should understand the theory and practice of testing and quality assurance of a software product. He or she knows and understands the entire software development cycle: from the idea to the delivery of the project or its launch on the market. Of course, a tester understands testing methodologies, knows the types of testing and their levels. He or she knows how to read technical documentation, analyse requirements, and write test documentation.
What is UAT?
This is a process whereby a group of people investigates the effectiveness of a service, its functionality. Another name for it is beta-testing.
UAT is used to:
- understand how the product behaves in real conditions, whether the result is as intended;
- detect if all possible features have been added;
- check if there are any bugs which hinder the user.
Testing is one of the integral parts of project creation.
Types of user acceptance testing
UAT testing is divided into types:
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Alpha/beta testing.
In the alpha stage, employees and other people close to the project test the product instead of users. Beta testing is the next step, when a group of potential customers is gathered for testing.
Helps to ensure that the product does not violate laws and complies with all regulations within a particular industry. Testing is most often needed for health care and finance projects.
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Operational acceptance testing.
Determines the effectiveness of processes that occur outside the client’s visibility (internally) but are necessary for all product functions. This type helps analyse data collection, security systems and so on.
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Black box strategy testing.
Designed to examine the causal relationship between user interaction with the product and the outcome that results from it. At this stage, people are explained what the product is for, but how exactly it works they learn on their own (functional testing website).
QA is the part of quality management focused on creating and setting up processes whose purpose is to ensure that quality requirements are met (the product will meet the customer’s quality expectations).
Consists of processes/actions aimed at ensuring the quality of product development at each of its stages. These actions usually precede product development and continue while the process is in development. QA itself is responsible for developing and implementing processes and standards to improve the software development life cycle (SDLC), and providing assurance that these processes are followed. The focus of QA is to prevent defects at all stages of its implementation and to continually improve it.
In order for the services provided to be of value, it is essential that testing is aimed at verifying the features that are:
- are meaningful to Customers/Users
- influence the user’s opinion about using the system
- reduce potential cost risks
There are four directions in QA testing:
- Test Analyst – determines in a project what needs to be tested, for this purpose he conducts a product study, makes its logical map and breaks the software into its component parts, setting testing priorities at the same time;
- Test Designer – based on information received from the Test Analyst, arranges the testing process and writes test cases that are used for checking the quality of a software product;
- Test Executor (Test Executor) – checks the software for errors using the test scenario written by Test Designer, and processes the bugs found in a special service (for example, Jira) with a detailed description of the steps for their reproduction;
- A Test Manager organizes and controls all activities related to testing: assesses the timelines for each phase of testing, makes a schedule and monitors its execution, controls the coverage of requirements by tests, and assigns tasks to team members.
Often in small companies, a tester combines several of the above areas, and sometimes all four.
