User Acceptance Testing -
Software Licence Agreements and Software Development Contracts - Part 6

Factory Acceptance Testing

In order for a software supplier to ensure their products are fit for purpose, factory acceptance testing must take place before a software product is released.

For off the shelf products the onus is solely on the software supplier to ensure the product meets the functional requirements and is bug free to avoid having to patch copies of software already released to market.

However, in more bespoke or customisable solutions the responsibility for successful factory acceptance testing prior to release falls on both parties. The majority of the responsibility falls on the software supplier to ensure that the product is tested in house prior to release.

Time pressure to deliver often reduces the actual time spent on this phase of software development to a minimum. This is a cause of a far greater number of faults being reported in the user acceptance testing phase which is a more costly exercise for both parties.

To ensure factory acceptance testing occurs and is performed adequately obligations must be placed upon the software supplier to deliver test documentation to the customer for review prior to the customer signing off to receive a release. The test results should contain certain numbers of test iterations across the whole software suite

Obligations must also be placed upon the customer to deliver in a timely manner items such as a suite of test data and test scripts to the software supplier. Forcing this co-operation through contractual agreement creates a balance in the contract to focus the parties minds on the job in hand thereby reducing the time spent user acceptance testing on a customer’s site thereby reducing cost.

User Acceptance Testing

Released software invariably involves some degree of acceptance testing and the methods of conducting it are more or less onerous on the software supplier. To properly conduct acceptance testing, the purchaser should be given the opportunity to prepare their own test data and test scripts. The acceptance testing should be conducted in the presence of the software supplier so that instances of apparent defects may be dealt with immediately, and if the tests are successful obtain the acceptance certificate immediately, as acceptance certificates are the precursor to payment. Provision for retesting should be set out to allow a speedy process in the event that a genuine defect is identified during acceptance testing process. Warranty periods for software maintenance arising from defects should run from the acceptance date and not before.