User acceptance test phase
During the user acceptance test (UAT) phase, the cutover process is validated, and the customer performs a UAT to validate the system as acceptable for production usage.
UAT is performed in two rounds with an emulated cutover immediately prior to each phase. Then, the cutover process can be refined prior to the real production cutover. The second round of UAT proves that all fixes from the first round have been successfully deployed into the gold build. The second round is intended to be a short regression test of 2-3 days prior to customer sign-off of the system.
The target milestone for this phase is the UAT customer sign-off of the system.
The following illustration shows the high-level steps for this phase.
Steps that may be completed in parallel have the same sequence number in the table below.
Step | Description |
|---|---|
19. Emulated cutover 1 | The emulated cutover replicates the steps of the real production cutover as far as possible without impacting current production service. This involves the on-premises system, onboarding and to-be-production system. This process always involves an update to server references and replication of the onboarding database to the to-be-production system within the emulated cutover window. The BMC Helix Operations team participates in the cutover process. The BMC go-live assessment is also performed during the emulated and production cutover. For more information, see Go-live-phase and Managing-the-gold-build-image. |
20. UAT round 1 | The customer and internal project team perform full application and integration testing of the system (that is, user acceptance testing). This testing is performed on the to-be-production system to ensure this environment is as tested as possible prior to go-live. Use documented tests to ensure that the full range of the application is tested. You can develop fixes for issues on the onboarding system and then promote the fixes to the to-be-production system. Record all issues and fixes in a spreadsheet or fault tracking system. Then, track and copy any data or workflow changes back into the gold database image. At the end of UAT Round 1, hold a meeting with the customer to review all open issues and agree which will be resolved before go-live. Any issue fixes are deployed into the gold image in the next step. |
21. Restore gold backup and deploy UAT fixes | The gold image is restored into the onboarding database, and all workflow and data fixes are updated into this image before it is backed up. This step can only be successful if the project team have recorded all fixes and changes during UAT. |
22. Emulated cutover 2 | The second emulated cutover delivers a fresh data set for the second and final round of UAT. This process is refined after the initial test of the cutover process performed in the first emulation. The timing of this emulated cutover provides an accurate estimate of the outage duration for the real production cutover. |
23. UAT round 2 and UAT sign-off | The customer performs a final round of regression testing, focusing on defects found during the first round of UAT. This process should take no more than a few days to complete. After the customer is satisfied that the system is ready, a formal sign-off is performed as the last action prior to go-live. No further defect fixes are expected to be required at this point. Any unexpected issues will require an update to the gold build and further testing. |