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Acceptance Testing
In this article, I am going to discuss Acceptance Testing. Please read our previous article where we discussed Visual Testing. At the end of this article, you will understand the following important pointers which are related to Acceptance Testing.
- What is Acceptance Testing?
- What is the use of Acceptance Testing?
- Why is Acceptance Testing Necessary?
- Explain Types of Acceptance Testing
- Explain the Process of Acceptance Testing
- Which Tools Are Used in Acceptance Testing?
- What are the Advantages of Acceptance Testing?
- What are the Disadvantages of Acceptance Testing?
What is Acceptance Testing?
Acceptance testing is a type of testing used to evaluate whether or not the software system satisfies the requirements. This test’s primary objective is to assess the system’s adherence to the business requirements and determine whether it has satisfied the standards necessary for delivery to end users. Acceptance testing is a type of formal testing based on function processing and user requirements. It establishes whether or not the software complies with the requirements set forth by the user. The system acceptability level is tested with the required number of users in a manner similar to black box testing. The fourth and final phase of software testing is this one.
Before adopting the finished product, customers conduct user acceptability testing (UAT), a sort of testing. UAT is typically performed by the client (domain expert) to ensure satisfaction and to determine whether the application is functioning in accordance with real-time business scenarios that have been provided.
What is the use of Acceptance Testing?
- To identify the flaws that the functional testing phase missed.
- The quality of the product’s development.
- What buyers genuinely require is a product.
- User experience and product performance may both be improved with feedback.
- Reduce or get rid of any production-related problems.
Why is Acceptance Testing Necessary?
Acceptance testing might appear unnecessary once the product has gone through Unit Testing, Integration Testing, and System Testing, but it is necessary for the reasons listed below:
- If requirements change while a project is being developed, it may not be adequately communicated to the development team.
- Developers create functions based on their own interpretation of the requirement document, and they might not be aware of the client’s true requirements.
- Acceptance testing is crucial to detect these tiny faults because there may be some that can only be found when the system is actually utilized by the end user.
We only deliver the program to the client once it has been thoroughly tested; no client ever accepts it without first utilizing it. As a result, they perform user acceptability testing, which is a single round of testing for their pleasure.
Explain Types of Acceptance Testing
There are different types of Acceptance Testing:
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT): UAT is used to assess whether a product is functioning appropriately for the user. The majority of the requirements chosen for testing are those that are frequently used by customers. Another name for this is end-user testing.
- Business Acceptance Testing (BAT): BAT, an acronym for “Business Acceptance Testing,” serves as a means to assess whether a product aligns with the company’s objectives and meets its specific requirements. Due to rapidly changing market conditions and new technology, BAT’s primary focus is on maximizing corporate profitability, which might be difficult and need updating the current implementation, which adds to the budget.
- Contract Acceptance Testing (CAT): A CAT contract stipulates that after a product is live, within a specific timeframe, an acceptance test must be conducted, and the product must pass all acceptance use cases. Here is a contract known as a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which stipulates that payment will only be issued if the Product services are in compliance with all standards, hence fulfilling the conditions of the contract. Sometimes, this agreement is reached before the product is introduced. All aspects concerning testing time, designated testing regions, conditions related to potential future problems, payment schedules, and other relevant details must be explicitly outlined in the contract.
- Regulations Acceptance Testing (RAT): This is used to verify whether a product infringes on national laws and regulations before it is made available to the public. Despite the fact that it may not have been on purpose, the company will suffer as a result. The product or application that is to be released in the market typically has to go under RAT since different nations or locations have different rules and regulations established by their governing agencies. The product will not be published in any country or territory if any laws and regulations are broken in that nation or that particular region. If the product is released despite a breach, only the product’s makers will be directly liable.
- Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT): The operational readiness of the product is evaluated using this non-functional testing technique. The majority of the tests addressed include recovery, compatibility, maintainability, dependability, and others. OAT makes sure a product is stable before it is put into production.
- Alpha Testing: Alpha testing is performed by a specialized testing team, commonly referred to as alpha testers, to assess the product in the development testing environment.
- Beta Testing: It involves exposing the product to actual end users—often referred to as beta testers—in their natural context in order to evaluate it. Errors are fixed after gathering user feedback. It also enhances the product to deliver a great user experience.
Explain the Process of Acceptance Testing
- Requirement Analysis: In this step, the testing team examines the requirements document to determine the goal of the program being created. The project charter, process flow diagrams, system requirements specifications, business use cases, business requirements documents, and requirement documents were used to organize the tests.
- Test Plan Creation: Making a test plan outlines the entire testing strategy. This method is employed to guarantee and assess whether the program complies with the requirements as stated.
- Test Case Designing: Creating test cases based on test plan documents is part of the stage known as test case design. Test cases should cover the bulk of the acceptance testing scenario.
- Test Case Execution: Execution of test cases with appropriate input values is referred to as test case execution. The testing team gathers input data from the end user before doing each test case with the user to ensure that the program functions properly in the real-world setting.
- Verification of Goals: After all testing procedures are completed successfully, the testing team verifies that the software application is bug-free and ready to be given to the client.
Which Tools Are Used in Acceptance Testing?
Several tools can be used for acceptance testing; a few are listed below:
- Watir: This tool is used in acceptance testing to run automated browser-based test cases. For communication between processes, Ruby is used.
- Fitness Tool: Use the fitness tool to enter input values and have test cases automatically generated. Values must be entered by the user for the tool to run test cases and provide results. For the purposes of inter-process communication, Java is used. This tool makes it simple to build test cases and record them as tables.
What are the Advantages of Acceptance Testing?
The benefits of Acceptance Testing are:
- Because users are actively involved in the testing process, it allows the project team to understand the users’ additional requirements.
- Executing tests automatically.
- Due to their involvement in the testing process, clients feel confident and satisfied.
- The user can more readily express their needs.
- It just covers the Black-Box testing procedure, therefore the complete product’s functionality will be examined.
What are the Disadvantages of Acceptance Testing?
The drawbacks of Acceptance Testing are:
- Users should be familiar with the product or application’s fundamentals.
- Users occasionally choose not to take part in testing.
- It takes a while to get input for testing because there are many users involved and opinions can vary.
- This testing process is not being participated by the development team.
In the next article, I am going to discuss Alpha Testing. Here, in this article, I try to explain Acceptance Testing. I hope you enjoy this Acceptance Testing article.
About the Author: Pranaya Rout
Pranaya Rout has published more than 3,000 articles in his 11-year career. Pranaya Rout has very good experience with Microsoft Technologies, Including C#, VB, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API, EF, EF Core, ADO.NET, LINQ, SQL Server, MYSQL, Oracle, ASP.NET Core, Cloud Computing, Microservices, Design Patterns and still learning new technologies.