User acceptance testing, Lecture notes of Information Technology

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U ser A cceptance T esting

August 11, 2012

User Acceptance Testing

Why is Testing Important? Most of us have had an experience with software that did not work as expected. Software that doesn’t work can have a large impact on an organization, and it can lead to many problems including:

• Loss of money – this can include losing customers right through to financial penalties for non-compliance to legal requirements
• Loss of time – this can be caused by transactions taking a long time to process but can include staff not being able to work due to a fault or failure
• Damage to business reputation – if an organization is unable to provide service to their customers due to software problems then the customers will lose confidence or faith in this organization (and probably take their business elsewhere) It is important to test the system to ensure it is error free and that it supports the business that depends on it. The later problems are discovered the more costly they are to fix.

White Box Testing

Program to finalize a Sale: For each SaleItem GrandTotal = GrandTotal + SaleItemAmount Next TotalTax = GrandTotal * 13% IF (GrantTotal <= CreditLimit) Then Print Receipt Else Display message “Insufficient Funds”. White Box testing will use a variety of values that test each branch and outcome. This requires knowledge of how the program is written.

• (^) Test: test with 1 SaleItem
• (^) Test: Test with >1 SaleItem
• (^) Test: use a mix of price ranges
• (^) Test Totals are correct
• (^) Test: input value < credit limit, receipt printed
• (^) Test: input value = credit limit, receipt printed
• (^) Test: input value > credit limit, display message “Insufficient Funds” 4

Black Box Testing

Black Box “System” Input output Black Box testing is done without the need to know how the system performs the task just that the output is as expected. Black Box Tests: Test: SaleItem = reciept Test: SaleItem = insufficient funds

The “V” Model for Testing The “V” model is a methodology where development and testing takes place at the same time with the same kind of information available to both teams. It is good practice to write the UAT test plan immediately after the requirements have been finalized. The "V" model shows development phases on the left hand side and testing phases on the right hand side.

User Acceptance Testing

proposed by Paul Rook in the late 1980s 7

What is a Test Strategy? The UAT Test Strategy describes the approach that’ll be used for the acceptance testing of the project deliverables. The Strategy will also identify roles and responsibilities, testing infrastructure requirements, resource requirements, recording of test results, change management for addressing defects and scope change(s), final acceptance criteria. The definitions of defect severities Critical\High\Medium\Low should be agreed upon prior to testing commencement and referenced\included in the document. What are UAT Test Cases? The User Acceptance Test Cases help the test execution team to test the application thoroughly. This also helps ensure that the UA testing provides sufficient coverage of all the UAT scenarios. The Use Cases created during the Requirements definition phase may be used as inputs for creating test cases (Black Box). The User Acceptance Test Case describes in a simple language the precise steps to be taken to test something.

User Acceptance Testing

Test Cycle

A typical testing cycle, based on a Waterfall development methodology:

• (^) Requirements analysis : Testing should begin in the requirements phase of the software development life cycle. During the design phase, testers work with developers in determining what aspects of a design are testable and with what parameters those tests work.
• Test planning : Test strategy, test plan, testbed creation. Since many activities will be carried out during testing, a plan is needed.
• (^) Test development : Test procedures, test scenarios, test cases, test datasets, test scripts to use in testing software.
• (^) Test execution : Testers execute the software based on the plans and test documents then report any errors found.
• (^) Test reporting : Once testing is completed, testers generate metrics and make final reports on their test effort and whether or not the software tested is ready for release.
• (^) Test result analysis : Or Defect Analysis, is done by the BA and client, in order to decide what defects should be assigned, fixed, rejected (i.e. found software working properly) or deferred to be dealt with later.
• (^) Defect Retesting : Once a defect has been dealt with by the development team, it is retested by the testing team. AKA Resolution testing.
• (^) Regression testing : It is common to have a small test program built of a subset of tests, for each integration of new, modified, or fixed software, in order to ensure that the latest delivery has not ruined anything, and that the software product as a whole is still working correctly.
• (^) Test Closure : Once the test meets the exit criteria, the activities such as capturing the key outputs, lessons learned, results, logs, documents related to the project are archived and used as a reference for future projects.

Automated Testing

Many tools exist that allow test execution to be programed\recorded. These tools have a number of strengths over manual testing:

• (^) Consistent execution of a test
• (^) Can be scheduled to run (e.g. after hours)
• (^) Limited resource requirements
• Faster execution of tests Weaknesses:
• (^) Knowledge of test software
• (^) Increased effort to prepare for test (programming\recording)
• Test program failure resulting in stoppages that require human intervention