Acceptance Testing

Definition

Acceptance testing (a.k.a., qualification testing) is the final launch testing of an application in its production environments to determine if it is acceptable to its customer organization.

Objectives

The typical objectives of acceptance testing are to:

• Determine whether the application satisfies its acceptance criteria.
• Enable the customer organization to determine whether to accept the application.
• Determine if the application is ready for deployment to the full user community.
• Report any failures to the development teams so that the associated defects can be fixed.

Preconditions

Acceptance test execution can typically begin when the following preconditions hold:

• All planned system testing is complete.
• The delivery phase is started.
• Alpha testing is complete.
• Beta testing is complete.
• The production environment is ready.
• The application has been ported to the production environment.
• The customer representative is ready to witness the acceptance tests.

Completion Criteria

Acceptance testing is typically complete when:

• Test scripts of test cases exist that test the system against its acceptance criteria.
• Acceptance test suites execute successfully.
• Acceptance testing does not discover any severity one defects.
• Acceptance testing does not discover any severity two defects that do not have adequate work arounds.

Tasks

Acceptance testing typically involves the following producers performing the following testing tasks:

• Independent Test Team:
  • Test Planning:
    • Update the acceptance testing subsection of the Project Test Plan (PTP).
  • Test Reuse:
    • Reuse acceptance criteria.
    • Reuse various system test procedures, scripts, and suites as acceptance test procedures, scripts, and suites.
  • Test Design:
    • Define new acceptance criteria for acceptance testing.
    • Design new acceptance test procedures, scripts, suites of test cases, and test data (if necessary).
  • Test Implementation:
    • Implement new test scripts, suites of test cases, and test data (if necessary).
  • Test Execution:
    • Execute acceptance test procedures, scripts, and suites of test cases.
  • Test Reporting:
    • Report failures prioritized by severity to the development team.
• Customer Representative:
  • Test Design:
    • Define acceptance criteria.
  • Test Execution:
    • Observe execution of acceptance testing.
  • Test Evaluation:
    • Evaluate and approve acceptance criteria.
    • Evaluate acceptance test results.
  • Test Reporting:
    • Accept or reject the system based on the acceptance test results.

Environments

Acceptance testing is typically performed on the following environments using the following tools:

• Production Environment at the customer site.
  • Test Harness
  • Use Case Tool
  • Record and Playback Tool

Phases

Acceptance testing typically involves the following tasks being performed during the following phases:

Guidelines

• To the extent practical, reuse the tests from system testing when performing acceptance testing rather than producing new tests.
• There may be acceptance criteria unrelated to acceptance testing (e.g., completion and acceptability of documentation).
• Acceptance testing is either performed in front of the customer or by the customer.
• Acceptance testing is often performed using actual data.
• Acceptance testing may be performed incrementally.
• The decision resulting from the performance of acceptance testing include:
  • System is acceptable as is.
  • System is acceptable for use, but some defects must be fixed prior to the next release.
  • System is acceptable for use, but some defects must be fixed in the next release.
  • System is not acceptable for use until some defects have been fixed.