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Sun[TM] Identitiy Manager 8.0 Upgrade 

Chapter 4
User Acceptance Testing

The User Acceptance Testing phase consists of the following tasks, which are very similar to Tasks 6, 7, and 8 described in Chapter 3:

Task 10: Reset Your QA Environment

Task 11: Upgrade Your QA Environment

Task 12: Perform User Acceptance Testing

The document describes user acceptance testing as a separate upgrade phase for several reasons:


Task 10: Reset Your QA Environment

Reset your to your QA environment to mimic your Production environment as closely as possible, being sure to use the same hardware and software versions used in the Production environment.

Specifically, you want to replicate your Production environment’s


Task 11: Upgrade Your QA Environment

The process for upgrading your QA environment is very similar to the process described in Task 8: Execute Your Upgrade Procedure.

Other than a few different parameter values, such as host names and connection information, your procedure for updating your QA environment must contain exactly the same steps as your procedure for upgrading the Test environment.

Because your QA environment is supposed to replicate the Production environment as closely as possible, you must monitor the upgrade closely for any errors caused by data values, data volumes, or platform considerations that were not fully tested in the Test environment.

To help you plan the final phase of your upgrade, upgrading your Production environment, carefully measure how long it takes you to execute various steps in your upgrade procedure.


Task 12: Perform User Acceptance Testing

Performing user acceptance testing is comparable to performing Task 9: Perform Functional Testing. In fact, you might choose to execute your test plan or a subset of the plan in this simulated Production environment.

The main difference between these two tasks is that for user acceptance testing, you must arrange for the people who actually use your Identity Manager application to test it with realistic data.

Though it might be difficult to schedule user participation with people distributed across your organization, user acceptance testing is usually quite valuable. Giving users an advanced look at the next version of your Identity Manager application generally helps maintain productivity and encourages adoption. Conducting user acceptance testing also demonstrates that the deploying organization is proactive and responsive to the needs of the people who are using the application.

User acceptance testing often uncovers problems and clarifies requirements for your Identity Manager application. The users might also find issues that are specific to aspects of your platform that were not tested in other environments. Although most developers prefer to find problems in earlier phases, finding problems during user acceptance testing is still much better than finding problems after you upgrade the Production environment.

Even if you ultimately decide to go into production with issues or limitations, you will know about these issues or limitations ahead of time. Key users are then prepared to communicate the problems and any workarounds to other users of the application.

As with Task 8, if you have to fix any problems, you must

  1. Incorporate the fixes back into your Development environment’s source-control baseline.
  2. Reset your Test environment.
  3. Upgrade your Test environment.
  4. Retest your Identity Manager application.
  5. Generally, repeat User Acceptance Testing. You might decide that incremental testing is sufficient.


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Part No: 820-2963-10.   Copyright 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.