| dwwright99 wrote
What do you base that statement on? I recognize that a lot of BA job postings include testing as a required activity, but does that make it part of Business Analysis as a discipline?
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Why do I think BAs are more likely than not involved in UAT?
Business analysts have been managing the “business requirements” through the process and so need to be able to verify that they have been delivered. What better opportunity than working through the UAT cases?
I am not suggesting a BA has to ‘own’ the UAT plan and cases, although I do think a healthy dose of ownership is important – given it is the last validation step the BA has before you present the system to the business for deployment.
In many small or medium sized projects there is no test lead or test manager and the BA does in fact take ownership of the UAT testing activities, while the designer or lead developer manages the various software and hardware tests.
Also the BA is the expert on the requirements and so should be a part of the user acceptance testing, as they will be able to quickly highlight obvious omissions or errors and so saving valuable time.
Lastly, where there are bugs, omissions or other problems, by participating in the UAT the BA is available and better able to assist in categorising he priority of the issue, and even able to determine if non system workarounds can be devised rather fixing particular parts (most relevant where there is limited time and resources.)
Thanks for challenging me on my brief statement David. It leads to a better explanation on my part and a more interesting discussion board J