Topic Title:  How do you incorporate business team UAT testing into Agile development team cycles / sprints to avoid late testing and defects (“wagile”)?

Initiator:  Shannon Hausey & Sherrie Hanrahan

Participants:  Brian Attuso, Patrick McClain, Knud Hansen, Caurie Waddell, Jody Dattisman-Wagman, Rene Clayton, Cindy Coventry, Tracey Long, Jakob Andersen, Evy Vicioso, Theresa Travis, Bill Aikens, Jennifer Maldonado, Amit Bathia, Brad Silverman, Yvette Krayer, Tabatha Bowers, Vanessa Smith, Laura Boodran, Rita Oglesky, Erik Tandberg, Sheetal Agonle

Discussion Highlights:

• Struggle with business not having a UAT test plan.  Some business users want to use UAT test results for UAT.  Looking for suggestions on how to bring in business users earlier for UAT, possibly as part of the sprint.

Ideas for Action/Next Steps:

• Have collaborative brainstorm session with SME’s on both business and IT side to identify how testing should be conducted, and note differences in QA testing vs. UAT testing.
• Push back on the business with a deadline for UAT completion.  Hold them accountable for timeline, and force them to make decision on priorities if UAT is delayed or there are other blockers keeping team from finalizing / pushing to production.
• Try to do UAT at the same time as QA, iteratively, then the end to end / UAT at the end will not be as tedious and should result in less defects.
• Schedule time with business to review their test plan / test cases for UAT.
• Ensure there is end to end integration testing planned.
• Keep business and agile team engaged throughout the entire process (not just at kickoff and project completion).
• Use a Cloud to spin up environments for testing.  User can deploy to environments when ready (after content updates / non-dev changes are applied) and will not hold up systems dev team.
• Perform live demos for users, vs. screen shots.  Suggest “Science Fair” style where users can site with QA or Developers for an up close view of the work.
• Host demo, per usual, but then schedule one hour after the demo for a working session / UAT for real time feedback.
• Automate test scripts for UAT when possible.
• Hire or assign a dedicated UAT tester, vs. relying on FTE staff to do it side of desk.
• Use Product Owner to UAT at the story level to catch functional issues quickly.  
• Add a task for UAT to the user story, and assign to business user.  Story will not be done until UAT completed.
• Cross train QA and Developers as Users for better understanding of the UAT process.
• When there are hold ups to project completion because of UAT / business sign off, determine cost of delay and share with business owner / sponsors / management to give a big picture perspective.