Skipping or compressing User Acceptance Testing is one of the most common — and most costly — decisions made under delivery pressure.
Why UAT Gets Cut First
When timelines slip, UAT is often the first phase to be compressed. It happens late in the delivery cycle, it depends on business user availability, and unlike earlier technical testing, its value isn’t always visible to delivery teams under pressure to hit a go-live date.
The Real Cost of Skipping It
Issues that surface post-go-live because of inadequate UAT are typically far more expensive to fix than they would have been pre-launch — not just in remediation cost, but in damaged confidence among the business users who were promised a solution that “didn’t work.”
What Proper UAT Requires
- Acceptance criteria defined against real business scenarios, not technical test scripts
- Genuine business user time, protected and prioritised — not squeezed in around their day job
- Independent coordination between business, delivery, and project leadership
- A clear go/no-go framework tied to actual readiness, not just calendar deadlines
The Bottom Line
UAT isn’t a formality before go-live — it’s the last meaningful checkpoint where business reality can be validated against what’s actually been built. Treating it as expendable under time pressure is rarely a decision teams look back on favourably.
Excerpt: “Skipping rigorous user acceptance testing is one of the most common and costly decisions in enterprise rollouts.”
