Making any sound decision requires understanding. That includes product or system acceptance. If the customer is not made sufficiently prepared to participate in the acceptance test, customer participation is minimized and the test becomes more of a demonstration than an actual test. In a performance test (as opposed to a written test), a knowledgeable person judges the performance and deems it to be acceptable or not.

It is not fair to the customer to require him or her to judge without proper preparation. Additionally, judging the test is likely to require in-depth knowledge that can't practically be obtained by the customer. That means the customer should have a technically knowledgeable and experienced person on the customer's test team.

To highlight some important aspects of acceptance testing, let's take a look at two definitions:

Demonstration: A showing of the merits or functionality of a product, performed by a representative of the manufacturer or seller.

Acceptance Test: 1. A formal test conducted by the end user of a system, to determine if the system works according to specifications and should be accepted. 2. A specified level of testing in which all aspects of a product are thoroughly and systematically verified by the user and/or system owner to ensure that the product performs as expected. The scope of a particular acceptance test is defined for each individual application or system in the test plan.

Obvious differences between a demonstration and an acceptance test are that an acceptance test includes these elements:

• customer participation
• formal process (i.e. documented) of systematic examination
• verification of performance

During the acceptance test, what if something doesn't work as expected? It could be a system problem. It could be a false expectation or misundertanding of the customer. Who resolves the questions? Is it okay to continue the test and address the problem later, or must the entire test be considered failed?

These and many other questions can be addressed during the test if the customer has someone on the test team who is sufficiently knowledgeable and experienced with the type of system being tested.

The purpose is to avoid the customer (a) falsely accepting the test or (b) false rejecting the test. It is in the interests of both the customer and the vendor to have a properly composed customer test team.

To find out more about how RBCS can help you in executing accpetance tests, call us today at 949-831-6788!