The Challenge of Accepting Software

The Challenge of Accepting Software

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

Agenda


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.

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.

Agenda


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


• 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


• 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


• 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

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;

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance Testing – stages

Acceptance Testing

Test Cases - approaches:

• Requirements–based

• Business process (workflow) or user scenario

• Data–driven

Agenda


Areas of Application

Acceptance Testing

BFSI

Health care

Embedded

Gaming

ERP/ CRM/ SCM/ Retail

Aerospace

Agenda


AT in lifecycles

Acceptance Testing – in Waterfall

AT in lifecycles

Acceptance Testing – in a Simplified V - model

AT in lifecyclesAcceptance Testing – in Traditional and Agile

AT in lifecycles

Value & Risk - Waterfall vs Agile

Agenda


The status of IT Projects

According to CHAOS Report - 2015

Why IT projects fail?

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


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


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


Other reasons why it fails:

1. No collaboration2. Focusing on how, not on what3. Expecting acceptance tests to be a full regression suite4. Focusing on tools5. No management buy–in

Agenda


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


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.


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”

Agenda


Outsourcing Acceptance Testing

Usual model:

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?

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

Questions?

Education

The Challenge of Accepting Software