Testing from a User Perspective

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Quality   Testing/Test Management  

Testing is an integral part of building or updating computer systems. Even the best programmers and software architects will not see every possibility and will end up missing requirements--or code things incorrectly and end up with defects in the system.

That is why testing is so important, and being able to test from a user’s perspective is one of the best ways to determine how well the system will work once it is in production. However, getting into the perspective and the role of an end user and simulating operations may be difficult for the project team to accomplish due to either resources, time or other stumbling blocks in the way.

Getting Into the Role
In order to perform user testing, you need to have a user. Ideally, this is someone who currently uses or will use the system that is being tested. Unfortunately, most users already have one full-time job and might not want to give up their weekends in order to test new functionality in a system, so their participation in the testing may have limitations.

If users are not available, then there should be resources on the project who are knowledgeable enough about the system and can test as if they were users. This may involve some training and work on the project team’s part, but it is important to test as users would test. This is the perfect opportunity for members of the team to step up and take on …

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