Hollywood Secrets of Project Management Success

Lesson 16: Focus on User Acceptance Testing

When the director’s cut of the picture has been delivered, the door to production is still left open. Now the picture is screened for test audiences, to gauge their initial response to it. On the basis of this response, the studio may order some refinements, some changes, maybe even some reshoots. The thrust here is to rely on the audience as the ultimate arbiter of quality. Strong test screenings usually point to strong market performance; poor test screenings usually indicate that something somewhere has to be reworked. We can borrow this in similar form, expressed as Lesson 16: Focus on user acceptance testing.

When IT shops focus on end user satisfaction, project success is more often realized. Accordingly, ...