What is acceptance testing?

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Learn about the importance of acceptance testing and some of the tools we use when working with clients from Ten10 Consultant, Nuha Al-Shabi

Acceptance testing is a chance for businesses to make sure that their needs are being addressed. It is an opportunity to confirm that, in accordance with the requirements acquired earlier in the project, the software setup satisfies their organisation’s needs and supports its requirements

In this blog, we’ll cover the different kinds of acceptance testing that are used by businesses, best practices that can address some of the common challenges in acceptance testing, and useful tools that we use when conducting acceptance testing for our clients.

Types of acceptance testing

Acceptance testing is the last form of testing carried out before the system is launched. It is performed by business users who are knowledgeable about both user and business requirements. They conduct testing against business scenarios by entering realistic data with the purpose of verifying that the given software satisfies user needs within the framework of the business environment it functions in prior to go-live.

Companies can implement acceptance testing using the following types:

User Acceptance Testing

It is the final phase of software testing. It aims to test the software’s usability before releasing it. It is crucial to do these tests before launching your system as users, whom the software is designed for, can provide insightful feedback on their experiences.

Business Acceptance Testing

This is done to determine whether or not the developed software satisfies the organisational objectives. Testers extract test cases from the business requirements and execute them one at a time. If all the test cases meet the definition of done that was established at the beginning of the development cycle, then the system is ready to go live.

Regulations Acceptance Testing

This is done to confirm that the application satisfies all governmental and legal regulations.

Operational Acceptance Testing

This is carried out before the release of an application to the production stage. It happens after user acceptance testing but before the programme is launched. This testing’s main objective is to prevent users from encountering any compatibility and performance problems when the software is installed in real-world settings. It ensures that the system is operationally ready to go live – whether the system can be supported by operational teams and whether they have the appropriate documentation to support it.

Alpha and Beta Testing

Alpha is the testing performed by distributing the software system to a set of internal users from the organisation that developed the software. They conduct their tests on an early version of the code and discover errors that were not caught earlier.

Beta testing comes after alpha testing, when the software is released to a selected subset of users who have high expectations of a working software system and can therefore find further bugs that escaped the alpha testing.

Benefits of acceptance testing

Acceptance testing with all its subtypes ensures the quality, reliability, useability, functionality, and performance of the software. It can be used as a regression test before the release of the software to either produce ideas for improvements or confirm that the developed product aligns with business requirements, and is in a release-ready state.

This phase of testing involves engaging many different end users and stakeholders to make sure that the system can handle necessary tasks in real-world scenarios, according to the technical and functional specifications.

Added benefits include:

  • Verifying that the objectives of the planning phase were met in terms of the business requirements and determining areas for improvement from the viewpoint of the end-user
  • Lower costs of finding defects in live
  • Increasing end-user confidence in the software
  • Providing an end user’s vision

Acceptance testing best practices

When it comes to implementing acceptance testing, many companies struggle and face challenges that make acceptance testing inefficient and difficult to manage.

It’s crucial to initially determine the kinds of users who will utilise your product or service before you begin accepting any fresh test submissions. You can accomplish this by researching your target market and then developing a questionnaire that will help you learn more about the people that are already utilising comparable goods or services.

The creation of acceptance test scenarios based on the kinds of user experiences you want to observe is simple once you have this information. For example, for a product developed for an international law firm, business analysts create a list of the different user roles that will be using the developed system – this can range from administrators to clients, lawyers and senior managers. Once this globally dispersed list of end users is determined, acceptance test scenarios can be designed and executed.

Once tests are executed, results should be documented at every step including comments on any areas for improvements and recording bugs that need fixing and retesting. This step can be time-consuming for testers that need to record bugs which then need to be reviewed by developers to reproduce the issues and fix them. This can be addressed by choosing a good testing tool that makes defect tracking easier for both people engaged in acceptance testing and developers.

Acceptance testing tools

FitNesse

FitNesse is a useful Java tool that is used to conduct acceptance testing. It is beneficial to create tests and keep a table of all the outcomes. The tool’s users input prepared data and tests are automatically generated and run. Then results are returned to users to evaluate the system’s compliance with the business requirements and to confirm if the software is behaving up to their expectations.

Watir

Watir is a toolset for automating browser-based tests during acceptance testing using the programming language Ruby to communicate with Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Jira

Jira can be used to perform acceptance testing as it works with a wide range of browsers and operating systems and has configurable Scrum and Kanban boards that allow for the collection of requirements, the creation of user stories, the facilitation of communication, and the tracking of defects.

qTest

qTest is one of the top test management platforms that supports the most recent approaches and procedures, like Agile and DevOps. It allows you to manage, organise, and report on all testing-related activities.

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