User acceptance testing

A User. Doesn't he look happy.

UAT, or “user acceptance testing” is the process whereby an IT department experiments on its workforce the way scientists experiment on mice. It is designed to make sure new software it would like to impose on the workforce but which users do not want, understand or care about, will not be so disruptive, annoying or useless that users rise up in outright rebellion.

The optimal response of UAT is acquiescence. Ideally, indentured servants mutely accept the technology, ploughing meekly onward in an anaesthetised haze, the way cattle eventually accept branding or Winston Smith comes to love Big Brother.

“Acceptance” implies tolerance, not enjoyment. Forbearance. Sufferance. Coming to terms with a generally unsatisfactory circumstance. Sacrificing individual freedom and preference for a “greater good”. When one says “I have accepted my fate” one does not necessarily mean one is happy about it. So it is with user acceptance testing.

There is a reason it is not called “user enjoyment”, or “user appreciation”, or “user validation”.

It is not about the user.

See also

• IT department
• Due diligence

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