>> Curious as to how many of you independents handle UAT (User Acceptance >> Testing), whereby you are getting them to sign off on delivery of the goods (software) and their acceptance of said software.<<
The simple answer to your question is yes. It is part of my background at EDS and the engrained System Life Cycle development methodology. I will say I don't do it for every project. Not every part of a development methodology needs to be implemented for each and every project. The hard thing is not developing a document for the sign-off, the hard thing is to get the user to sign something that says they did the testing and everything works as expected. The difficulty normally centers around the users inability to know when the software is really working as expected, and a fear the developer will evaporate as soon as the document is signed. It also depends on the type of customer. I work for a lot of other developers and often they take the responsibility of the documentation. Business owners, not so much so I have to do all the work. In the perfect world you have written specifications and these specifications easily translate into test cases for the test plan. The writing of the test plan is the killer part of this entire process, mostly due to the inherit list of verbal change requests. This is all about discipline, but even the most discipline developer misses the occasional change request. This is one of the reasons why Test-Driven Development makes so much sense to many of us. I also inform all my customers at some point (normally in the sales meeting) that software is never done. It might have periods of dormant development, but changes are inevitable. Nature of business. So as part of the UAT sign-off, the users need to know things might get discovered down the road that are undocumented or broken behavior and these will get changed or fixed as part of the next wave of development. It is a matter of prioritizing the next set of changes. Things to search for on the Web: test plan, UAT process, UAT sign-off. Rick White Light Computing, Inc. www.whitelightcomputing.com www.swfox.net www.rickschummer.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
