Tag Archives: Business Analysis

Mastering User Acceptance Testing: A Step-by-Step Guide for Business Analysts

If your role is accountable for the correct understanding and implementation of requirements, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) might become one of your best friends once the solution is built. In this post, we are exploring the importance of implementing UAT, as well as how to prepare and run it. Let’s dive in!

Once the development and QA phases are completed, User Acceptance Testing should be included in your process prior to release. This ensures that the end users, or the SMEs on their behalf, validate that the experience meets the expectations outlined in the requirements. It will be the moment to show “how” those needs are going to be addressed.

Usually, a Business Analyst (BA) is accountable for leading this activity, which requires careful preparation. Let’s break down the User Acceptance Testing process:

  1. Limit the scope: Be aware of the different paths you will be preparing and take into consideration that non-happy paths should be included to ensure different scenarios are being covered.
  2. Create your document: A spreadsheet could be enough, choosing a tool that you are familiar with will be helpful for you and the collaborating users. Construct a template containing some space for the user information, such as Name, Role, and Date. Second, and in order to organize UAT instructions some of the columns that could be used for the headers are: Step #, Step Description, Expected Result, Actual Result (Pass/Fail), and Feedback. Whereas the rows will contain the actual description of each column.
  3. Break it down into the different processes: Separate each process or scenario. Providing a short introduction about what will be covered, will help the users to understand where it begins, ends, and any nuances involved.  
  4. Delve into each step. At this point, you are probably eager to write down each step, so make sure that before getting started you grasp the end-to-end process. You should perform a walk through the entire process (and probably you will need to revisit it a couple of times) while describing each step and the expected result. Using the test cases built by the QAs could be tempting, but that is not a good practice. Don’t get me wrong, QA engineers do a terrific job while testing the solution, ensuring the quality of the development. However a UAT is not a copy/paste of the test cases, take into consideration that the perspective must be the user’s one (which mostly is non-technical), thus each step should be clear, concise, and avoid jargon. For instance, if the user should enter their credentials rephrase it to make it easy to understand, something like “Fill in the user name and the password field with the following information….” 
  5. Double-check the environment. UAT is an activity performed before a functionality hits production, then an environment such as staging is more appropriate (if you are using Salesforce, a Partial Copy Sandbox is a good choice). At this point, you are making sure that each UAT participant is able to access the environment (for Salesforce double-check that users are created in the sandbox and have the appropriate permissions granted)
  6. Verify data and links. Related to the last point, if the user is expected to interact with several interfaces or fill in some data such as passwords, tokens, IDs, etc.;  that information should be explicitly provided in the related step. Moreover, if an input is unique, that should be mentioned upfront, and an example per participant must be provided. It is a good idea to ask the devs or QA for a set of information and let them know it is going to be used in UAT only.
  7. Select the UAT users (including Subject Matter Experts) to join the activity. Be mindful to include people that will be interacting with the solution, where SMEs take an important role too since that can represent final users too. Once you have confirmation, make sure to copy your template accordingly, so that each person has their own.
  8. Set up the meeting and provide support. Explain the dynamic to the participants. Remember you are not the one executing the UAT, of course, to get started with the activity you can share your screen and use a couple of steps to show how each one should be reviewed and the template completed, but it is a hands-on activity for them. Pro tip: ask your participants to record their screen, if any bugs or questions are raised you will know where to refer.
  9. Bug’s prioritization. If any defect is reported, as a BA you should identify and capture it. Heads-up, UAT is not a space for new requirements, thus before reporting the bug to the team review the scope and the priority if, in fact, it is a bug.
  10. Sign off. Once the bugs have been corrected and retested, you are ready for the sign-off with a fully tested solution on both sides (IT team and SMEs)!

Following these 10 steps, User Acceptance Testing may look like a time-consuming activity, but conducting it as part of the development cycle adds value and assures users will have a seamless experience once the new solution hits production.

If you’re interested in BA content, check out our blog The Strategic Role of the Business Analyst in Salesforce Implementation.

Don’t let possible solutions force you to solve the wrong problem

If you’re like many organizations, you’re so focused on finding or building the right “solution” that you probably aren’t solving the right problem. You may be thinking, “but you specialize in building custom solutions for the Salesforce Platform, why would you say something like that?” The truth is, we prefer partnering with companies to solve the right problems. Partnering with an organization to build a solution, without having determined what needs and problems must be addressed, guarantees that no matter how amazing the product we deliver is, it won’t be successful because it doesn’t make our partners successful. Our business analysts spend significant time helping our clients, but if a client comes to us already too far down the path of trying to “find the right solution,” the last thing they want to hear is “you’re chasing the wrong problem.”

Understand the Need

You can avoid solving the wrong problem by making sure you know the underlying needs. Understanding customer needs can be challenging, we get it. If it was easy, many more companies would be on the list of “innovators” that are changing markets around the world. Even Strategyn, a company that focuses on innovation strategy, says that 95% of companies can’t agree on what a customer ‘need’ is. Strategyn has found that almost all companies don’t have an agreement on what a “need” is. It’s not that these companies disagree on what the customer needs are, they don’t agree on what a customer need is. Whether your customers are internal (you’re building apps for your fellow employees) or external (you’re going to revolutionize the world with your new app), start by ensuring you have an agreement within your organization on how you’re going to define customer needs. 

The process you use to get to the heart of those needs can vary. Some organizations, like Salesforce, use an established approach to innovation that they share publicly (see Innovate the Salesforce Way.) You could take “jobs to be done” perspective or use traditional approaches like market research, gap analysis, SWOT analysis, etc.  Also, you could review existing information available to you, like feedback from customers or employees, financial trends, emerging themes, etc. You could even start by looking at your high-level business objectives and asking yourself a few key questions:

  • What is the potential threat or opportunity?
  • Which stakeholders within the organization should be consulted?
  • What’s the desired outcome?
  • Who benefits?

The key here is to ensure you uncover the challenge or opportunity, that way you avoid solving the wrong problem. You’re still too early in the process to start thinking about solutions. If you’ve already started, stop yourself. Coming up with ideas might be fun, but applying solutions now only limits you.

Identify the Problem

If your organization is like many we’ve seen, the business needs you’ve identified could lead to a large number of potential projects.  At this point you need to identify which problem you’re going to address. Get more than one perspective on it and dig deep. You don’t want to limit your view based on your own biases and you want to be sure you’re addressing the root cause of the problem. Putting considerable time and energy into your work to address only a symptom of the larger problem doesn’t give you the relief you need, and likely won’t help your career.

Ask yourself a few questions about the problem you’ve identified:

  • What makes this problem significant?
  • Who is impacted?
  • Have others tried to solve this problem before?

Make sure you understand your customer (or those impacted by the problem). This will better position you to solve it and avoid the wrong problem. There are many approaches to gathering customer requirements. Salesforce calls their process Innovation Customer Discovery. It includes embodying, shadowing, and interviewing to create customer archetypes. Then they create a futurecast to create a compelling argument or case for change. You could also take a more traditional approach like this advice from the Project Management Institute blog, with facilitated sessions or one-on-one discussions with stakeholders. If your organization is more agile, you could focus on capturing user stories. Take the approach most appropriate for your organization, but be sure you dig as deeply as possible.

“Get in the customer mindset and ‘wear their shoes’ to fully understand their needs. Take the time to familiarize yourself with processes and once you accomplish that, then start focusing on the solution.” 

Analia G., Business Analyst

It’s in your best interest to spend more time on this part of the process than you probably expect. Clearly defining the problem you want to tackle saves time and energy further along in your work. But again, don’t think about the problem in terms of potential solutions yet.

Scope The Challenge

Every project comes with some level of uncertainty and ambiguity, which has the potential to derail your project. It’s time to take all the work you’ve done so far to understand the needs, the problem, and the customer, and to create more structure to ensure your project’s success.

  • Write everything down: Make sure you’ve written down the need, problem, and customer requirements, and what success looks like. Keep track of any assumptions you’ve made in this process.
  • Define success: Determine what success looks like. The more clearly you can quantify success, the better. It helps you establish how any potential solutions will be measured
  • Identify your stakeholders: Now that you have a better understanding of what you need to solve, pull together your dream team. Bring in people with different backgrounds and experiences, it will help you find new and creative ways to solve the problem.
  • Know your limits: Think about the solution from an internal and an external perspective. What do you have control over? For example, if your challenge is with how customers engage with your sales team. You have far more control over your sales team and their tools and processes than you ever will with the behavior of any specific customer. Focus on the things you can control and keep track of any assumptions you make.

Now that you have a better foundation to work from, it’s time to focus on brainstorming possible ways to solve the problem. Maybe you’ll find you can get the most out of a process change. Like buying new software, or custom developing your own app. Use the materials you’ve created to give yourself a benchmark for measuring all possible solutions. You’ll always have to balance time, money, and scope. At least now you have the right tools to make good choices. Let us know what you decide.

Our team has worked with different organizations and their projects. We are Salesforce platform experts and offer custom development to help you build your platform and solve the right problems. If you want to know more about our work, go check out our latest success stories.