Your UAT Test Cases Suck: A No-Nonsense Guide to Mastering Salesforce Projects
Introduction
Are you a Salesforce Admin who’s been tasked with delivering projects but can’t seem to get UAT testing right?
If so, then this blog post is for you! Here, we’ll provide an in-depth look into how to create effective user acceptance test (UAT) cases and ultimately master the challenges associated with rolling out Salesforce projects.
You’ll learn about different approaches to preparing UAT plans, common mistakes Admins make when testing new features, and unique tips that will minimize your risk of errors during implementation and help reveal any existing defects or flaws in the system before they lead to bigger problems.
Let’s stop guessing how to perform UAT testing for your Salesforce projects.
This guide provides peace of mind that your project has passed muster.
So, if you’re ready, let’s dive in!
It’s time to stop leaving your success up to chance and start taking control with the right tools.
So, sit back, grab a snack, and get ready to learn how to create UAT test cases that don’t suck!
Define Your Requirements
As a Salesforce Administrator, you must set clear expectations for unit testing of your project by defining your requirements. This step is crucial as it helps you identify the scope of your testing and focus on the critical areas of the project.
To begin, take the time to understand the objectives of the project and the specific features or functionality that will be tested. This can be achieved by reviewing your project documentation, consulting with relevant stakeholders, or engaging with team members to clarify any grey areas.
Once you understand what is being tested, you can make your user acceptance testing criteria and map out your UAT test cases.
Here are some best practices to follow when it comes to defining acceptance testing your requirements for UAT test cases:
1. Be Clear and Concise:
Ensure your business requirements are well-defined, understandable, and relevant to the project manager’s objectives.
2. Prioritize Critical Areas:
Focus your testing on critical areas likely to cause defects or hinder user acceptance or adoption.
3. Consider Real-World Scenarios:
Design UAT test cases that simulate real-world scenarios that users might encounter, such as workflows, validations, or integrations.
4. Get Feedback From the Project Team:
Collaborate with your team members to review the requirements and ensure they align with business requirements and the project objectives.
By defining your requirements and test execution plan upfront, you will clearly understand what you need to test, which will help you optimize your UAT test cases.
Ultimately, your Salesforce project deployment’s success greatly depends on the effectiveness of your UAT test cases. Following these best practices, you will be better equipped to deliver a smooth project deployment, improve user experience, and streamline development.
Test Your Scenarios
To ensure a smooth and successful deployment of your Salesforce project, it’s essential to test your scenarios thoroughly. Scenarios are a series of steps end-users will take to perform specific tasks in the system.
These could include creating new records, updating existing ones, or running reports.
Testing your scenarios will help you identify gaps and errors in the project, ensuring that the final product meets user needs and is defect-free.
However, not all scenarios are created equal.
To be effective, your scenarios must be realistic and cover all possible end-user cases.
This means including negative scenarios where users enter incorrect data, skip steps, or perform tasks out of order. By testing negative scenarios, you can identify potential issues that may arise and ensure that the system can handle them effectively.
So, how do you create effective UAT test cases for Salesforce projects?
Here are some best practices to follow:
Gather Input From End-Users:
Before creating your scenarios, talk to end-users to understand their workflows and pain points. This will help you create scenarios that reflect real-world usage and are relevant to the project manager’s objectives.
Use a Structured Approach:
Follow a structured approach when creating scenarios. Start with the most critical functions and work down to less critical ones. Include all the steps and inputs required to complete the scenario successfully.
Cover All Possible Use Cases:
Consider all possible use cases when creating scenarios. This includes negative scenarios, which test how the system handles incorrect or unexpected inputs.
Assign Ownership and Deadlines:
Assign ownership of each scenario to a specific team member and set deadlines for completion to conduct user acceptance testing and test. This will help ensure that the user acceptance testing process is thorough and completed on time.
By testing your scenarios effectively, you can identify issues early in the software development and process and minimize the risk of defects in the final product.
Negative scenarios ensure the system can handle unexpected inputs and user errors, improving the overall user experience.
Use these best practices to create effective UAT test cases for your Salesforce projects and set your team up for success.
Create a Testing Plan
As a Salesforce Admin, creating an effective testing plan is crucial to benefit your project deployment greatly.
A solid testing plan will help you identify potential issues early on, ensure that your stakeholders are aligned, and significantly improve the overall success of your project.
Here are some key steps to help you create a comprehensive testing plan for your Salesforce project:
Identify the Requirements and Test Scenarios:
Start by reviewing your project requirements and test scenarios. This will help you understand what needs to be tested and how to prioritize your testing efforts.
Define Your Testing Strategy:
Determine what type of testing you will conduct, whether functional testing, integration testing, or performance. Clearly define your testing strategy and the tools you will use to perform your tests.
Identify the Stakeholders:
Understand who will be involved in your system test management, testing team, and process. This will ensure that everyone on the UAT team knows their responsibilities and understands the system testing and plan.
Schedule Testing Activities:
Establish when your beta testing phases and activities will take place. This includes defining deadlines and milestones to help you stay on track.
Define Your Testing Scope:
Clearly define what parts of the project will be tested. This will help ensure that all project aspects are adequately covered in integration tests.
Create Testing Scenarios:
Develop testing scenarios that align with your testing plan. These scenarios should outline the desired outcome and the steps required to achieve the desired result.
Prioritize Testing Scenarios:
Prioritize your testing scenarios based on their business impact and relevance to the project.
Following these steps, you can create an effective software testing process and a test plan that aligns with your project requirements and scenarios.
Your testing plan will provide a clear roadmap for your testing activities and help you deliver a quality Salesforce project that meets your stakeholders’ needs.
Conduct a Peer Review
Creating accurate and relevant UAT test scripts and cases is vital as a Salesforce Administrator. The best way to do this is by conducting a peer review.
A peer review is a process where you get feedback from other Salesforce Administrators or end-users. This feedback will help you identify gaps or areas that need improvement in your UAT process and test cases.
Before conducting a peer review, you must ensure that your UAT test cases are clear and concise. Ensure you have identified all possible scenarios and objectives for the project.
Your test cases should also be simple and easy to understand, avoiding technical jargon your peer reviewer may not understand.
Once your UAT test cases are ready, contact your fellow Salesforce Administrators or end-users for their feedback. Schedule a meeting with them, and explain why you need their help.
They will appreciate the opportunity to be part of the development process and help improve the project’s overall outcome.
Encourage the testing team and your peers to be honest and critical about the test cases during the system testing phase and the peer review.
After all, the test management’s goal is to ensure that the project runs smoothly.
Ask them to focus on the following areas when they review your UAT test cases:
Are the test cases relevant to the business objectives?
Do the test cases cover all possible scenarios?
Are the test cases easy to understand?
Do the test cases include all the necessary information?
Are the test cases achievable?
Incorporating feedback from the peer review will enhance the quality of your UAT test cases. Take note of the suggestions and make the necessary changes.
Ensure that you have addressed all the issues raised by your peers before submitting acceptance testing the test cases.
Doing so will give you a higher chance of your user acceptance tests successfully deploying alpha testing the project.
Use a Testing Sandbox
A full testing environment or sandbox is a Salesforce environment that allows you to create and test changes without affecting your production environment.
It’s an isolated space, a separate testing environment where you can perform tests and experiments and identify and fix issues before deploying changes to your live environment.
A testing sandbox will streamline your testing activities and make them more efficient.
Here are some reasons why you should use a testing sandbox for your UAT testing process:
1. It Helps You Avoid Production Mishaps
Production environments are where your customers, partners, and employees access your Salesforce solution.
Any mistakes or issues that occur in production can affect your organization, damage your reputation, and cost you time and money.
A testing sandbox lets you test changes before deploying them to production, reducing the risk of production mishaps and ensuring a smooth deployment.
2. It Facilitates Collaboration and Communication
A testing sandbox creates a shared space for your Salesforce stakeholders, including developers, administrators, end-users, and business owners.
It facilitates collaboration and communication, helping you identify issues, share feedback, and perform tests more effectively.
3. It Saves Time and Effort
Creating UAT tests and test cases can be time-consuming, especially if you’re testing complex workflows, integrations, or customizations.
A testing sandbox allows you to create and test changes faster, reducing the time and effort needed for UAT testing.
4. It Improves Quality Assurance
UAT testing is a critical part of the quality assurance process. Using a testing sandbox enables you to perform more rigorous unit tests yourself, get more test results and data, identify more issues, and improve the quality of your Salesforce solution.
Conclusion
Following our outlined best practices, you can create test cases that cover all possible scenarios and align with the project’s objectives.
Throughout this guide, we have emphasized the importance of defining your requirements, testing your scenarios, creating a testing plan, conducting a peer review, regression testing, and using a testing sandbox.
Defining your test data requirements involves collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and expectations. By doing so, you can ensure that your test cases align with the project’s objectives and meet the needs of the end users.
Testing your scenarios involves testing the scenarios that users may encounter while using the Salesforce application. This allows you to have actual software users identify and address defects and ensure the application functions smoothly for business users.
Creating a testing plan involves outlining your strategy, including the scope, objectives, and timelines. This helps you stay organized and focused as you execute your software testing plan.
Conducting a peer review involves asking other team members, beta testers, and business analysts to review your test cases and provide feedback. This helps you identify gaps or improvement areas in your test cases.
Finally, a testing sandbox allows you to test new features and functionality in a safe and controlled environment. This test environment enables you to identify and address any issues before deploying the changes to the production environment.
Effective UAT testing is essential for ensuring a successful Salesforce project deployment. Following these best practices, you can create test cases that cover all possible scenarios, align with project objectives, and deliver an exceptional user experience. So what are you waiting for? Start crafting your UAT test cases today!
FAQs
Q1: What’s the importance of UAT in Salesforce projects?
UAT, or User Acceptance Testing, is crucial in any Salesforce project.
Why, you ask? Let me explain.
I worked on a Salesforce project with a major financial institution a few years back. The project involved building a custom application to manage their loan servicing process. The development team worked diligently on the application, ensuring that every requirement was met and all the features were functioning as intended.
When it came time for UAT, the excitement of the development and test team soon turned to frustration. The UAT test cases were poorly written and lacked the necessary detail. This resulted in significant delays in the testing process, leading to missed deadlines and increased costs.
Ultimately, the project faced major issues during the go-live due to inadequate UAT. User pain points were not identified during testing, and the end-users were forced to find workarounds, resulting in poor adoption rates and overall dissatisfaction.
The importance of UAT in Salesforce projects cannot be overstated. It is your chance to ensure that the application meets the user’s needs, operates as intended, and doesn’t cause any unexpected errors or issues. Without UAT, you run the risk of delivering a product that is riddled with problems, leading to costly and time-consuming fixes down the road.
Effective UAT involves user requirements, writing detailed test cases that cover all possible scenarios, and anticipating user behavior. This step ensures issues are identified and resolved before going live, improving user adoption and satisfaction rates.
Q2: How should I prioritize UAT test cases?
Successful Salesforce projects require a comprehensive UAT (User Acceptance Testing) plan that includes prioritizing the test cases.
But how do you determine which test cases to prioritize?
Meet Sarah, a Salesforce Administrator in charge of a new project roll-out. Everything was on track, but during the UAT stage, she realized that the number of test cases was overwhelming. She couldn’t possibly test them all before the go-live date. Sarah knew she needed to prioritize the test cases, but she wasn’t sure how.
That’s when Sarah started to evaluate each test scenario by considering two crucial factors: the risk level and the impact on end-users. For example, if the test case could cause significant damage to the data or break an existing workflow, she considered it a high-risk test case. Similarly, if the test case was related to a critical feature for end-users, it was also considered high impact.
With these factors in mind, Sarah quickly identified the top 10 test cases that needed immediate attention. She focused on these test cases, ensuring they were thoroughly tested and resolved before moving on to the less critical scenarios. This approach helped her optimize her testing efforts and gave her test lead a deeper insight into the project.
Sarah’s approach helped her to prioritize her UAT test cases and ensured a smooth deployment process. By focusing on the high-risk and high-impact test scenarios, she could identify potential issues early in the testing phase and ensure end-users received a seamless experience post-deployment.
Prioritizing UAT test cases is a crucial step in ensuring the success of your Salesforce projects. By evaluating the risk level and impact on end-users, you can identify and focus your efforts on the most critical scenarios. An effective UAT testing plan can streamline development, improve user experience, and achieve successful project delivery.
Q3: Why should real users be involved in testing?
As Salesforce Administrators, creating effective UAT test cases is an essential piece of the puzzle to ensure a successful project deployment. But have you ever thought about the importance of involving real users in your testing process?
To answer this question, let me tell you a story. A few years ago, a team was tasked with implementing a new Salesforce module for a company. The team created a set of UAT test cases and thoroughly tested the module, feeling confident that everything worked smoothly.
However, upon deploying the module to real users, it quickly became apparent that there were some crucial flaws in the project. Users were frustrated by the module’s clunky interface and lack of essential features that would simplify their workflow. It was a disaster.
This situation could have been avoided if real users had been involved in the testing process. Not only do real users have the ability to identify issues that the development team might have overlooked, but they can also provide valuable feedback that can help improve the user experience and streamline development.
Involving real users in your UAT testing process also helps build trust and buy-in from stakeholders. When users feel their feedback is being heard and implemented, they are more likely to be invested in the project’s success.
But how do you involve real users in your testing process?
One effective strategy is to conduct focus groups or user testing sessions. These sessions not only allow users to test the project, but also allow them to provide feedback and suggestions in real time.
Involving real users in your UAT testing process is crucial to ensuring project success. Their feedback can identify issues that might have been overlooked, help improve the user experience, and build stakeholder trust. By taking a user-focused approach, you will be better equipped to ensure a smooth project deployment and streamline development.
Q4: What role does documentation play in UAT?
Documentation is critical in the UAT process as a roadmap for the testers to follow. It defines the scope of the testing, identifies the test cases, and provides clear instructions on conducting the test, including the expected outcomes. Furthermore, documenting the test results provides valuable insights into any defects or areas where improvements can be made.
Let me illustrate this with a real-life example. The project was to implement a new custom object to manage donations in a nonprofit organization’s Salesforce instance. The UAT testing was conducted by a group of end-users selected from different departments. The documentation prepared for the UAT provided detailed instructions on how to test the new custom object, including expected outcomes and user acceptance stage and criteria.
During the testing, one of the end-users noticed an issue in the donation form that was not captured during the development phase. The testers documented the issue and provided clear steps to reproduce it. The documentation was then shared with the developers, who fixed the issue and redeployed the system. Without this documentation, the issue would have gone undetected and could have resulted in significant consequences for the organization.
Documentation is crucial for UAT’s success. It guides testers, provides a record of testing results, and helps identify areas for improvement. As a Salesforce Administrator, spending time and effort creating a comprehensive testing plan and documentation is essential to ensure a smooth deployment. Doing so can improve the user experience and streamline the development process for future projects.
Q5: How can regular feedback benefit my Salesforce project?
As a Salesforce Administrator, you know that feedback is crucial for the success of any project. It provides valuable insights into what is working, what needs improvement, and what should be avoided altogether.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work on a Salesforce project with a team of talented developers, designers, and administrators. We were tasked with implementing a new customer relationship management (CRM) system for a client that had outgrown their existing solution.
As we began developing, we created a series of UAT test cases to ensure the system met the user’s needs. We set up a feedback loop that encouraged the users to test the system and provide feedback on what was working and what wasn’t.
Thanks to this process, we were able to catch several critical issues that would have had serious repercussions if they had gone live. For example, we discovered that the system was not syncing properly with the client’s accounting software, causing a significant delay in invoicing. We also learned that some of the data fields were not clearly labeled, leading to confusion and errors in data entry.
We quickly addressed these issues based on user feedback and conducted additional testing to ensure our changes resolved the problems. As a result, we could implement the new CRM system on time and within budget, with minimal disruption to the client’s operations.
This experience taught me the importance of regular feedback and how it can benefit any Salesforce project. By soliciting user feedback early and often, you can catch issues before they become critical problems. You can also identify opportunities to improve the user experience and streamline development.
Regular feedback is essential for the success of any Salesforce project. It empowers you to make informed decisions based on user input, identify opportunities for improvement, and ensure that your solution meets the needs of the business. So don’t be afraid to ask for feedback early and often; use it to drive your project to success.
