COMPEL Glossary / user-acceptance-testing-uat
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the final validation phase before an AI system goes into production, where actual end users (not the development team) evaluate whether the system meets their operational needs, integrates into their workflows, and produces acceptable results in realistic working conditions.
What this means in practice
UAT identifies usability issues, workflow integration problems, and edge cases that technical testing cannot catch because they depend on domain expertise and real-world context. For organizations, skipping or rushing UAT is a common cause of AI deployment failures where technically sound systems are rejected by users who were not adequately involved in validation. In COMPEL, UAT is part of the sprint-level quality assurance process during the Produce stage, coordinated across workstreams as described in Module 2.4 on multi-workstream coordination.
Related Terms
Other glossary terms mentioned in this entry's definition and context.