Effective Software Project Management

Acceptance Test Procedures

This should always be a collaborative effort by the project team and the customer. The acceptance test procedure is written collaboratively with the customer and the project team participating. Constructing test data might be an individual or a collaborative effort. The customer will have some testing to do with their end users to ensure that the system is “friendly” and responds as expected. The project team will have some testing to do with the technical team to ensure performance is as expected and that the system is technically sound.

As part of every project review and every change request you must revisit the acceptance test procedures. I recall a situation several years ago that taught me a lesson about change that I have never forgotten. I was the CIO, and the situation involved one of my junior programmers and a customer who was never satisfied. In fact, it was common knowledge that our Information Systems Division wasn’t numbered among their friends. A manager from that customer’s department ran into a junior programmer in the hallway one day and innocently asked: “John, I forgot to tell you in our requirements gathering session yesterday that we also need to see that sales activity report broken down by product line within sales territory and we need it reported monthly.”

Before responding, John thought to himself: This is a great opportunity to win some points with this manager. I’m going to be in here on Saturday doing some clean-up work ...