Lagging Burger King experienced a reputational boost in 2002, when new CEO Brad Blum reinstated the burger chain’s most famous slogan, “Have it your way.” The campaign really resonated with young consumers, who craved customization, and rekindled consumer and investor confidence in the chain. Here, VMC’s Galen Erickson tells us how User Acceptance Testing (UAT) enables users to have software “their way,” inspiring a sense of ownership and improving its adoption.
Because UAT is performed by clients or end users rather than testers, the users become stakeholders in the software being developed, which can help boost their confidence in the product – and can prevent that “black eye” previously discussed.
Let’s say you order a hamburger at a fast food restaurant, and it isn’t exactly how you’d like it, so you take it back to the counter. If that burger was software and your order taker was a functional tester, the response you’d get may be something like, “Tough luck. That’s what comes on the burger you ordered.” In functional testing, they are just making sure that nothing is broken on the tactical side.
Instead, if that burger joint used UAT, you might say “I want lettuce on this hamburger.” The person behind the counter will give you the lettuce and say “There you go.”
Nothing was really broken or wrong with the hamburger. But, UAT gives the developer a chance to show the end user the product. That person gets to play around with it – preview it, take ownership, and say, “Yes, this is actually what I ordered.”
UAT allows end users and clients to be involved in how software is developed, instilling confidence that the product will work in the real world just the way they want it to. How could your software users’ performance and productivity benefit by letting them have it their way?
Contact Galen Erickson at GalenEr@vmc.com or call 877.393.8622.
