Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing is the final testing done on the software prior to its final delivery. Please note that acceptance testing is different from user acceptance testing which is normally done by the customer or representative of the customer within the company.

Acceptance testing is sometimes also referred as functional test because each acceptance testing is also testing the functionality of the software.

Acceptance testing should be defined and agreed during the requirement phase of the project and is normally defined by the business customer as the minimum test to be executed before the delivery of the software. Some customer is hesitant or not technical enough to write the acceptance testing, that is when the BA comes in action, every requirement gathered during the investigation phase should be converted into acceptance testing. Best acceptance test criteria will be created when customer, BA, developer and tester get together, this will also avoid certain test to be run multiple time during the delivery.

Acceptance testing in Agile

Traditionally acceptance testing is done at the end of the project but in an agile environment acceptance tests will be defined and agreed at the beginning of every iteration. Every user story becomes a test and the story is not complete until it passes these acceptance criteria.
Acceptance test helps developer to understand the functionality from the user story. Make sure all the scenario in the user story is covered by the acceptance test. Each acceptance test should define the environment, inputs, steps and outputs for each user story. Make sure each acceptance test is understood and verified by the customer (this is very important if someone else is writing these test on customer’s behalf)