Acceptance testing
In engineering and its various subdisciplines,acceptance testingis black-box testingperformed on a system(e.g. software, lots of manufactured mechanical parts, or batches of chemical products) prior to its delivery. In some engineering subdisciplines, it is known as functional testing, black-box testing, release acceptance, QA testing, application testing, confidence testing, final testing, validation testing, usability testing,, or factory acceptance testing.
In most environments, acceptance testing by the system provider is distinguished from acceptance testing by the customer (the user or client) prior to accepting transfer of ownership. In such environments, acceptance testing performed by the customer is known as beta testing, user acceptance testing(UAT), end user testing,site (acceptance) testing, orfield (acceptance) testing.
Overview
Acceptance testing generally involves running a suite of tests on the completed system. Each individual test, known as a case, exercises a particular operating condition of the user's environment or feature of the system, and will result in a pass or fail boolean outcome. There is generally no degree of success or failure. The test environment is usually designed to be identical, or as close as possible, to the anticipated user's environment, including extremes of such. These test cases must each be accompanied by test case input data or a formal descrīption of the operational activities (or both) to be performed—intended to thoroughly exercise the specific case—and a formal descrīption of the expected results.
Process
The acceptance test suite is run against the supplied input data or using an acceptance test scrīpt to direct the testers. Then the results obtained are compared with the expected results. If there is a correct match for every case, the test suite is said to pass. If not, the system may either be rejected or accepted on conditions previously agreed between the sponsor and the manufacturer.
The objective is to provide confidence that the delivered system meets the business requirements of both sponsors and users. The acceptance phase may also act as the final quality gateway, where any quality defects not previously detected may be uncovered.
A principal purpose of acceptance testing is that, once completed successfully, and provided certain additional (contractually agreed) acceptance criteria are met, the sponsors will then sign off on the system as satisfying the contract (previously agreed between sponsor and manufacturer), and deliver final payment.
User acceptance testing
User Acceptance Testing(UAT) is a process to obtain confirmation by a Subject Matter Expert (SME), preferably the owner or client of the object under test, through trial or review, that the modification or addition meets mutually agreed-upon requirements. In software development, UAT is one of the final stages of a project and often occurs before a client or customer accepts the new system.
Users of the system perform these tests, which developers derive from the client's contract or the user requirements specification.
Test designers draw up formal tests and devise a range of severity levels. It is preferable that the designer of the user acceptance tests not be the creator of the formal integration and system test cases for the same system, however there are some situations where this may not be avoided. The UAT acts as a final verification of the required business function and proper functioning of the system, emulating real-world usage conditions on behalf of the paying client or a specific large customer. If the software works as intended and without issues during normal use, one can reasonably infer the same level of stability in production. These tests, which are usually performed by clients or end-users, are not usually focused on identifying simple problems such as spelling errors and cosmetic problems, nor show stopper bugs, such as software crashes; testers and developers previously identify and fix these issues during earlier unit testing, integration testing, and system testing phases.
The results of these tests give confidence to the clients as to how the system will perform in production. They may also be a legal or contractual requirement for acceptance of the system.
Acceptance Testing in Extreme Programming
Acceptance testing is a term used in agile software development methodologies, particularly Extreme Programming, referring to the functional testing of a user story by the software development team during the implementation phase.
The customer specifies scenarios to test when a user story has been correctly implemented. A story can have one or many acceptance tests, whatever it takes to ensure the functionality works. Acceptance tests are black box system tests. Each acceptance test represents some expected result from the system. Customers are responsible for verifying the correctness of the acceptance tests and reviewing test scores to decide which failed tests are of highest priority. Acceptance tests are also used as regression tests prior to a production release. A user story is not considered complete until it has passed its acceptance tests. This means that new acceptance tests must be created for each iteration or the development team will report zero progress.
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