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2

Hey,

I build web apps for a living.

An important but often painful process is client/user acceptance testing.

How do you manage this process?

i.e. How do you get them to test? Do you give them test scripts? Do you give them a system to log bugs and change requests/feedback. How do you get the client to understand the difference between a bug and a feature change?

How go get clients to give you repeatable steps to create a bug/issue?

Any good web apps for managing this process (thinking a Basecamp like app would be very uesful for this)

Thanks,

Ed

+2  A: 

Don't give them test scripts.

To me that invalidates the testing process to a large degree because if you're thinking up test cases your software probably handles them because you've thought of them.

The idea of good testing is that there is a level of independence in testing so you can't cater for known test cases and also the client is likely to think of scenarios that you won't, which is the whole idea.

But how do you motivate them? Well, honestly I'd be surprised if they weren't motivated. I've generally found that motivating them to comment on func specs, requirements and other preliminary documentation is a far tougher battle. By the time you get to testing, you've eliminated an important psychological hurdle in that the software is now "real".

How you handle this depends to a large extent on the nature of your relationship to the client. If you have a formal process with an agreed upon spec, you should really be saying that the client has a certain period to sign off and accept the software and inaction is implied acceptance.

If it's an internal client well then that's harder. It probably all comes down to who's driving the project? Who are the stakeholders? These are the people you need to motivate such activity.

cletus
good points cletus. thanks
Ed Bloom
A: 

Usually the best method that I've come across for client testing is having them send screenshots of the problem and some of the things they did to create it. By this point, most of the testing should have been done in house and the egregious bugs should be weeded out. Having a system that automatically emails that an error occurs lets me know they are testing and I get most of the gory details from the stacktrace in the email.

Josh