UAT and Beta Testing

What is the difference b/w UAT and Beta testing?

User Acceptance Testing: Formal testing with respect to the user needs, requirement, Government regulations and business process conducted to determine whether or not a system satisfies the acceptance criteria.

·         It is often the final step before rolling out the application in production environment.

·         This type of testing gives the end users the confidence that the application being delivered to them meets their requirements.

·         This testing also helps nail bugs related to usability of the application.

Beta Testing: is a test process for a computer product prior to commercial release.

·         The software is released to groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product has few faults or bugs and to get the feedback field to a maximal number of future users.

·         It normally can involve sending the product to beta test sites outside the company for real-world exposure or offering the product for a free trial download over the Internet. Example: In web application (Gmail, Orkut, Facebook) released the Beta version

User Acceptance Test (UAT) Planning: It affects the effectiveness of the Testing Process. The Planning process outlines the User Acceptance Testing Strategy. It also describes the key focus areas, entry and exit criteria.

Designing UA Test Cases: derived by various use cases which ensured 100% coverage of all the scenarios during testing and inputs from Business Analysts and Subject Matter Experts are also used for creating

Selecting a Team that would execute the (UAT) Test Cases: Team should have a domain expert so it comprises of in-house team (Developers, Stake Holders, Project Managers, Volunteers, Existing SAM users)

Executing Test Cases: Team executes the Test Cases and may additional perform random Tests relevant to them.

Documenting the Defects found during UAT: Team logs their comments and any defects or issues found during testing.

Resolving the issues/Bug Fixing: The issues/defects found during Testing are discussed with the Stake Holders, Project Team, Subject Matter Experts and Business Analysts. The issues are resolved as per the mutual consensus and to the satisfaction of the end users.

Sign Off: Upon successful completion of the User Acceptance Testing and resolution of the issues the team generally indicates the acceptance of the application. This step is important in commercial software sales. Once the User "Accept" the Software delivered they indicate that the software meets their requirements.

 Who are expert users? Expert users have a stable mental model of the application structure they feel free to explore the application and try new things. They will not be too worried about making mistakes since they feel secure that they will know how to bypass them.

Selecting a Team that would execute the UAT Test Cases is an important step.

·         The UAT Team is generally a good representation of the real world end users and domain expert.

·         The Team thus comprises of the actual end users who will be using the application.

·         The Testing Team executes the Test Cases and may additional perform random Tests relevant to them.

  A company took a contract for developing a navy ship. Who will be responsible for performing UAT before taking the ship on any mission and why? Explain!

Ans. The company in-house teams along with some of the hired domain expert are responsible for the User Acceptance testing. As it designed for navy personnel, so team should include Navy's fleet commanders in chief because they have the broad knowledge from data, navy ships, crews, technical specification, material references that is used. Otherwise, as Navy ship contract is given to third party so some of them from High profile group (Stake Holder) will monitor the UAT and visualize the result thoroughly for making this mission successfully.