Evaluating User Acceptance Testing Effectiveness

Abstract

Background: User acceptance testing (UAT) is the last structured opportunity for business users to confirm that a system supports their work before release, yet it is routinely compressed, staffed by borrowed and tired testers, scripted from happy paths and closed by a signature that certifies attendance more than readiness. Objective: This review asks how UAT effectiveness should be measured and which conditions determine whether UAT detects fitness-for-use failures and informs a genuine release decision. Method: An integrative review of testing, requirements, packaged-software implementation and standards literature published to 2024, with cross-domain work on inspection and diagnostic detection used for analogy, was appraised for construct definition, escape-window specification and defect attribution. Results: Escaped-defect-based detection effectiveness is the most defensible outcome measure, but only when its observation window, severity weights and attribution rule are fixed in advance. Detection depends on scenario representativeness against production process variants, verifiable acceptance criteria, protected and rested business testers, and explicit coverage of configured objects in packaged software; schedule compression moderates all four. Contribution: The VERDICT framework (Validity of scenarios, Escape accounting, Readiness of criteria, Decision authority, Individual tester capacity, Compression, Tailoring), seven falsifiable propositions, formal indicators and a stepped-rollout validation design. Implications: Sign-off should be a recorded decision carrying a real right to refuse. No proposition has yet been tested; each awaits prospective evaluation in live programmes.