UATs are sacred.

There’s something sacred about UAT.

You might laugh at that and say you hate UAT (User Acceptance Testing for those who are new to project land). If you react like that, I’d guess that you are a SA, TA or a PM from a System Implementation Partner. 

I get why you hate UAT. 

Because it feels like an obstacle. It feels like you have to deal with people who don’t understand the beautiful thing you’ve built and who see every user error as a ‘bug’. 

I’ve seen projects where in order to speed up the process, and to avoid headaches, the project team do their own ‘UAT’.

But maybe we’ve missed the point. We’ve missed what a UAT is. What UAT does.

UAT is about the U. It’s about the Users. 

UAT is a moment where the users get to put their hands on the tool that they have been hearing about and have only seen in demos up to that point. It’s a moment of real, forced collaboration. It is where things that were never considered or brought up in the discovery phase, suddenly bubble to the surface. A ‘bug’ isn’t just a point of conflict. It’s a learning moment. It’s an opportunity to get the users involved in the build.

A good UAT has problems. It has pushback. It has arguments and reworks and fails. Reds and oranges, not just greens.

The point of UAT (one of them anyway) isn’t harmony. It’s ownership. 

Think about what a UAT does to build ownership. A good UAT brings different people to the table.

It gives the foundation for future ‘Change Champions’, ‘Super Users’, ‘Peer Coaches’ or whatever you want to call the in-house person who’s actually going to shift the needle on adoption in their team. What would UAT look like if the mantra the PM was repeating going into the testing wasn’t just “on time, on budget”, but also “on board”?

I know that PMs face a whole bunch of pressures. I know that Steercos want green ticks. But I also know that if a UAT has no problems, I get nervous about adoption. 

And failed adoption is a lot more expensive than another run of bug fixes.

To think about this a little further:

• For a bit more, this was a helpful checklist from Salesforce Ben that came out a couple of months ago. UAT as just one part of a great adoption-focused project.

  Watch this space. I have more thoughts on UAT as part of an adoption strategy.

  
  

• Which, on that note, I ran into Anita Hedges from ERM in Auckland last month, and we had one of those conversations where you can’t stop talking about the thing you’re passionate about. We’re looking to put together a podcast, white paper or joint rant in the next little while.

Written by Dan Godden. Sign up below for more and to get these straight to your inbox.