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WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN? Today’s fiercely commercial world places increasing pressure on the professional test manager to provide a complete, truthful and independent picture of the state of testing progress n the world of independent software verification and validation, nothing ever happens in isolation and, at times, it is all too easy to forget the critical ‘independent’ viewpoint, with the potential result that corporate reputations can be seriously tarnished. Test effort is cumulative. But it is not until the arrival of a period of sustained business interaction that the diligence of accumulated verification ‘fact’ has the chance to dovetail with the creativity of commercial validation ‘opinion’. Such a window affords the opportunity to combine the discipline of crafted test case execution with exploratory testing imagination. In a waterfall-world, that occasion is usually referred to as the UAT test phase.
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In an agile world, where the desire is to obtain broadest business approval across a related number of sprints, a label of UAT hardening is most often used. In such a way, the prospect of paying more than cursory lip service to individual archipelago land masses is present – an occasion to really join up the proverbial dots, so to speak. Howsoever named, this sustained business user interaction is the first time these users will have had sight of their new functionality and also time to give it a good kicking. Here is where the most convincing evidence accrues that illustrates whether the right product is being built and if it is being built the right way. In the eyes of many, this is the most critical period of testing in an entire project.
IVOR KELLY HEAD OF TESTING & UAT CONSULTANT
Ivor Kelly has spent more than a quarter of a century in the software testing profession. These days, he derives most pleasure in helping others mature their test function and building ‘top gun’ style training solutions.
