Topic — Project Management

Published November 6, 2025

Written by

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Master the essentials of user acceptance testing. See the steps project managers must follow to validate software with end users.

As a project manager and Scrum Master, I view the UAT team as the “fun police” of the project. They’re the ones who stand in the way of project completion and the celebration that comes after it. What they do, however, is a necessary step to ensure that all the hard work your team puts in actually yields a usable product.

Once all the technical work is complete, you need independent testers to confirm that the project has achieved its set goal, and that is the purpose of the UAT. It is the final validation before release, ensuring the software meets business requirements and operates as intended for end users.

Key takeaways:

• UAT is a final check against the business requirements, rather than focusing on technical defects or bugs.
• UAT mitigates risk to the business side of the project by preventing fixes post-launch and ensuring the business needs are met, resulting in a higher adoption rate and end-user satisfaction.
• UAT is a fairly standard 7-step process: Plan, Prepare Environment and Data, Create Test Scenarios, Execute, Log Defects, Retest, Sign-off

As a project manager and Scrum Master, I view the UAT team as the “fun police” of the project. They’re the ones who stand in the way of project completion and the celebration that comes after it. What they do, however, is a necessary step to ensure that all the hard work your team puts in actually yields a usable product.

Once all the technical work is complete, you need independent testers to confirm that the project has achieved its set goal, and that is the purpose of the UAT. It is the final validation before release, ensuring the software meets business requirements and operates as intended for end users.

Simplify UAT with Jira Manage test cases, track defects, and streamline approvals—all in one organized workspace. Jira keeps every stakeholder aligned so you can move from testing to launch with confidence.

What is user acceptance testing?

User acceptance testing (UAT) is the final phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC). The purpose of UAT is to validate business requirements and ensure that the software functions as intended from the end user’s perspective. The central theme the team should ask throughout this process is, “Is the user able to accomplish their tasks as intended using this software?”

UAT is the last line of defense against flaws or defects before the final celebration of a successful completion. This final step helps identify all workflow faults, business rule errors, and overall usability issues that could prevent the product from operating as expected. One reason this is critical is that addressing and fixing defects through patches and updates post-launch incurs higher costs than resolving them prior to release. UAT is designed to catch these potentially costly mistakes and ensure the final product meets both business requirements and technical specifications.

What are the types of UAT?

There are three types of UAT: alpha testing, contractual acceptance testing, and regulatory acceptance testing.

• Alpha testing: UAT testing conducted by company employees external to the project team. This is intended to get a set of “fresh eyes” while still having testers who are generally familiar with the product.
• Contractual acceptance testing: This version of UAT involves verifying features against contractual guidelines, typically involving legal teams to outline all terms and requirements.
• Regulatory acceptance testing (RAT): This is the testing procedure implemented when compliance is required, whether it be with local or federal statutes. (e.g., HIPAA, SOX).

What are the best practices for performing UAT?

Below are some of the best practices for conducting UAT. It is important to note, however, that these are not hard and fast rules; rather, they are strongly worded suggestions to write into your testing procedures for best results. As a project manager and Scrum Master who has run multiple software development projects, I have developed this framework as a best practice — trust me, it works!

1. Have clear and testable acceptance criteria

Each user story or documented requirement should have well-defined, pass-or-fail acceptance criteria.

Vague statement	Specific statement
The system needs good user management.	As a system administrator, I want to deactivate a user’s account so that I can securely revoke system access when they leave the company.
Users should be able to get reports.	As a sales manager, I want to generate a monthly sales report broken down by region so that I can analyze regional performance and allocate appropriate resources.
The checkout process needs to be easy to navigate.	As a guest shopper, I want to auto-save my shipping address after my first purchase so that I can complete future orders faster.

2. Involve actual end users

The intended users of the system should conduct the UAT. End users are the only ones who truly understand the day-to-day tasks of the business and can verify that the software provides a genuine solution to the problem, rather than creating new ones. Including anyone from the project or development team can create a confirmation bias and taint the testing.

Include	Don’t include
The new hire or inexperienced user	Developers
The skeptic or reluctant user	Stakeholders/sponsors
A manager or supervisor	Anyone on the project team

3. Create a dedicated, production-like UAT environment

A dedicated UAT environment is necessary, one that mirrors the production environment as closely as possible. This is how you will simulate the most realistic UAT experience for the testing team

Include	Don’t include
Fake data that will simulate real data	Live, raw, or production data
Production-identical security roles and permissions	Developer tools, debug flags, or admin “backdoors”
The final, QA-approved release code	Unstable builds or in-progress developer code

The UAT playbook: Steps to conducting an effective UAT

This is a seven-step plan incorporating best practices to create a roadmap for success when conducting UAT in your project. Each step in the plan builds on what precedes it and is critical to achieving an accurate result. As the saying goes for all forms of data analysis: garbage in, garbage out.

Step 1: Plan

This is the more strategic part of the process. It is where you define the goals and success criteria of the UAT effort. In your planning documentation, you also want to ensure that you have a clear reporting structure. Jira, an issue-tracking and project management tool within the Atlassian ecosystem, supports UAT by providing a centralized space that serves as a single source of truth for everyone involved in the project. Consolidating all information into a single repository allows for clear updates.

The following actions are part of this step in the process:

• **Define scope: **Clearly define which business processes are in-scope and which are out-of-scope.
• Determine entry/exit criteria: Define where the testing begins (entry) and the conditions for completion (exit).
• Gather the team: Identify and train the team who are planned and qualified to work as testers.
• **Develop a schedule: **Create a timeline that includes key milestones, with as much or as little detail as needed to support the procedures.

Step 2: Prepare testing environment

This phase focuses on establishing a reliable testing platform.

• Design the environment: Collaborate with your IT team to create a realistic UAT environment, one that closely resembles what the average end user is expected to use.
• Develop test data: Gather realistic test data for testing. This can be a challenging task, especially for highly regulated industries. The test data sets are critical to overall success.

Step 3: Generate test cases

This is where you translate the business requirements into actionable test steps. Business analysts create the test cases, log them as issues, and link them to their corresponding user stories using Jira’s “Link Issue” feature. Linking the test case and user story provides a clear understanding of where the requirements originated and the intended purpose of the test.

To complete this phase,

• Focus on real-world scenarios: Prioritize test cases that simulate real-world use cases over simple functionality checks. This is the first stage in determining whether the software will achieve its intended business goal.
• Write clear instructions: Create a step-by-step protocol tailored to the specific test. This should also include the desired outcome for a pass/fail grade at the end of the workflow.
• Review and approve: Involve business stakeholders in the final review and approval of test cases to ensure they accurately reflect real-world applications.

Step 4: Execute

This is where testers start to get hands-on and work with the system.

• Organize a kick-off meeting: Include all testers and stakeholders to formally start the UAT cycle. This is an opportunity for everyone to review the plan and, if needed, make any modifications or ask questions before the process begins.
• Run test cases: Testers execute their assigned test cases and compare the actual results with the expected results.

**Document everything!**Being a tester means that you must record all the steps you perform and the results. Screenshots or screen recordings are also best practices for later validation of results, both as confirmation and to aid the team if modifications are needed.

Step 5: Log defects

A well-structured defect management process is critical to project success. It is easy to say that something did not work as intended, but future teams need detailed documentation to address recurring issues.

The tester(s) follow the prescribed steps and log the results. If the test fails, the status is updated to Failed, and a new bug is created using the “Create Linked Issue” feature. This feature automatically links all bugs to the right test case and provides developers with a clear picture for effective triage.

• Use a central tool: Leveraging a single source of truth tool, like Jira, is a great way to keep all the information in one place.
• Provide clear details: A good defect report should include all the information future teams might need. There should be a descriptive title, a list of steps to reproduce the issue, expected vs. actual results, and visual evidence to support the claim (screenshots/videos).
• **Triage regularly: **The project manager or Scrum Master should lead a regularly scheduled meeting with key stakeholders to review, prioritize, and assign any newly discovered defects.

Step 6: Retest

Once the developer notifies the tester that they’ve squashed the bug (see what I did there), the tester retests using the prescribed procedures. If it passes, they update the status to Passed.

• Deploy fixes: The development team should deploy the bug fixes to the UAT environment.
• Verify fix: The original tester should rerun the failed test to confirm that the fix correctly addressed the issue.
• Perform regression testing: This is the process of verifying that the new fix has not inadvertently broken other parts of the system.

Step 7: Sign off

Now we’re down to the final step: the sign-off. This stage signals the formal conclusion of the UAT phase.

• Verify exit criteria: The Scrum Master or project manager confirms that the test meets the originally documented exit criteria.
• **Receive formal approval: **The assigned business sponsor(s) provide their formal, written sign-off, signifying the software works as intended and is ready for deployment to the world.

UAT vs. other testing

User acceptance testing differs fundamentally from all prior quality assessment and system tests. The latter focuses on the technical specifications and finding functional or performance bugs. UAT focuses on user workflows and user experience, while ignoring the product’s technical side.

A UAT tester is not trying to break the software; in fact, it is quite the opposite. Their focus is on running the software through its intended use cases and ensuring it functions as intended for the business.

UAT	Quality assurance (QA) / system testing	Beta testing
A formal and internally focused process with specific users identified to perform structured test scenarios before making a final go-live decision	Focused on testing the technical requirements of the software and ensuring all the specifications are met	Typically informal and involves releasing the software externally to a small group of real customers to gather feedback on a nearly completed product
UAT asks, “Did we build the right system?”	QA asks, “Did we build the system right?”	Think of beta testing as a sneak preview, asking if anyone has any final feedback

Trevor Greenberg

Trevor has spent over 10 years working in the project and program management industry. He holds multiple professional accreditations including Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, Project Management Institute Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB), and Certified Protection Professional (CPP). Trevor has worked for several Fortune 500 Companies, managing multimillion-dollar projects in various industries including retail, healthcare, software development, security, and government.