User Acceptance Testing (UAT): from headaches to unburdening

UAT, or User Acceptance Testing, is often the only stage in a project where business users actively get involved. Unfortunately, it usually happens too late, with little preparation, overly high expectations and underwhelming results.

Years ago, my manager said to me: “You’ll be testing our new ERP system over the next few weeks. You users know best how it should work, right?” If only I had known then what I’ve learned since, working at a company that lives and breathes software quality. Because while that reasoning seems logical, it reveals the core issue: UAT isn’t just “click around and see what breaks.” And if you treat it as a final checkbox, you’ll miss most of its value.

Here’s how UAT can become a powerful tool and how to avoid the common pitfalls.

1. Know who should be involved and when

UAT is often seen as the final stage of a project. But in reality, it should be a continuous mindset. The sooner you involve business users, the earlier you can gather meaningful feedback on requirements, design choices and workflows.

UAT isn’t just one final test session, it’s a shared responsibility that can and should happen in small, practical ways throughout the development cycle. By validating parts of the product with users early on, you dramatically reduce the risk of surprises later.

2. Involve the right people

UAT only works if you involve the right mix of people. It’s not just about key users or process owners. Think about support teams, customer-facing staff or even those who perform just one niche task. These are often the people who spot issues others would miss.

Too often, UAT is squeezed into people’s calendars “between meetings,” leaving little time for proper testing. Let alone documenting issues clearly.

Testing takes time, context and clear expectations. Not everyone needs to be a trained tester, but they do need to know what’s expected of them, and when.

3. Test environments should feel like the real thing (without the risk)

While most companies no longer test in production (thankfully), UAT is still often done in risky environments. If there’s only one shared environment where configuration, development and training all happen at once, reliability takes a hit.

A good UAT environment should be stable, realistic and, most importantly, a safe space to make mistakes. Business users need to trust that they can’t accidentally break anything. And you need to trust that what they test behaves like it would in real life.

4. Logging issues should be easy and useful

You don’t need to teach business users how to use Jira or Azure DevOps. Often, a well-structured Excel sheet or Word table works better than poorly filled-out bug reports in a tool they don’t understand. What matters is that they can report issues clearly: What were you trying to do? What happened? What did you expect?

Screenshots, sample data and timestamps help developers and QA engineers get to the heart of the problem faster. Testers play a vital role here: guiding the logging process, triaging issues and letting business users focus on what matters most: validating that the product actually works for them.

5. QA engineers add more value than you think

QA isn’t just about writing test cases or tracking bugs. Great QA engineers bridge the gap between development and the business. They help sharpen requirements before any code is written, support users during UAT, flag recurring issues, and keep communication flowing.

Their testing experience, communication skills, and process knowledge make developers more effective—not by solving the bugs, but by giving them better input, earlier warnings, and clearer signals. For business users, that means less frustration. For developers, fewer distractions.

The bottom line: UAT should be a final check, not a last resort

If UAT still turns up critical bugs, something went wrong earlier in the process. UAT isn’t meant to fix quality issues, it’s there to confirm that everything works as expected, from the end user’s point of view.

Handled well, UAT becomes a reassuring final check. No nasty surprises, just validation, refinement and maybe a few ideas for the next release.