Prepare your clients for project testing

Author: Brad Egeland

When projects reach the customer user acceptance testing (UAT) stage, sometimes things turn into chaos. Some clients are very thorough testers, but ill-prepared clients are much more of the norm. I understand that we’re the solution experts, but we shouldn’t have to hold the customer’s hand all the way through the UAT process. You may even have to do most of the testing for them, which can be a conflict of interest.

In my experience, the following three steps help customers prepare for project testing, which in turn helps to reduce my frustrations.

1: Set the expectations at the beginning of the project.

Customers often think their job is nearly done when they hire consultants to implement a solution for their project. You need to make sure the customer understands that you expect some participation and work from them — and that includes complete responsibility for UAT. Ultimately, they will be accepting and signing off on the project, so it’s up to them to determine how to gauge that acceptance.

The acceptance criterion needs to be understood by all parties before the project begins. Once that criterion is set, you must instill the concept in the customer that it isyour responsibility to build the system to that specification, and it is theirresponsibility to test the system so that they know it will ultimately meet their needs.

2: Ensure SMEs are available during planning phases.

When you talk to the customer about planning, preparing, and conducting the UAT, let them know their subject matter experts (SMEs) and end users (if they’re not the same employees) are critical to their success. It’s the customer’s responsibility, not yours, to round up the SMEs who will help define project requirements and test acceptance criteria.

It’s critical that these SMEs are available during the planning phases because decisions about how they’re going to fully test the solution has to begin very early in the project to be successful and purposeful.

3: Build customer test prep tasks into the schedule early.

The strategy that I find most helpful is to build customer tasks into the project schedule early; this requires customers to start on the UAT activities long before UAT happens.

During the design phase, build tasks into the schedule that require customers to work with their end users to define test plans for UAT and test-case scenarios that they intend to use during UAT. During the development phase, build more tasks into the schedule that require detailed review and sign off on those test-case scenarios and test plans.

By keeping these pre-test planning and prep tasks in front of clients in the early phases leading up to UAT, it will ensure that they never get too far behind.