13.13 User Acceptance Testing

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Engaging beneficiaries in developing user acceptance test (UAT) plans is one of the best ways to ensure their cooperative, if not proactive, participation in your project. The UAT plan must have meat and potatoes, that is, it must be detailed. I am not an expert in testing methodology, so I will not go to that level of detail in this discussion. What I can contribute is this: ask the user what 10 or 20 parameters are good indicators that the technology or process being rolled into their environment delivers the value that has been agreed upon. Do not worry about the number of parameters. Focus on their definition of value. Technology is used to increase productivity, lower head count, eliminate error or manual rework, and so forth. Find out which of these apply to your beneficiary, and look for descriptors of them that will be evaluated as a part of UAT. Specificity derived through this process helps you by engaging them in the process of identifying success. Once that is done, they become more aware of the effort required to ensure success.

It makes them think about the value to be delivered in specific terms, instead of the old "it would be great if …." It becomes far easier to speak in realistic terms with beneficiaries about what your project can and will not deliver in this context. This is all part of expectation management. In this context you can tell them, "Yes, you are right. It would be great if in addition to X, Y, and Z, we were also delivering A, B, and C, but we cannot. Let me review the technology and financial reasons for not including A, B, and C."

In a vacuum, this conversation makes you sound inept, insensitive, or penurious. In the midst of planning sessions addressing real issues, your position sounds far more credible to those wondering why the project is not addressing each and every issue they may have about the corporation's technology.

Little or no specificity in this regard practically guarantees the noninvolvement of the beneficiaries. They are now set up to snipe at you as the project wobbles toward the finish line, because they were never challenged to think about the project the same way you do. And that, of course, is: "How do we get this thing to work without ruining everyone's careers?"

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