Final answer:
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a critical phase in the software development process, normally occurring after system development and QA testing but before the release to production. It is designed to ensure software meets business requirements and is ready for real-world use by having users test functionality, reliability, and stability.
Step-by-step explanation:
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is typically one of the final stages in the software development lifecycle. It occurs after the system has been fully developed and unit and integration testing have been completed, but before the software is released to the production environment. The main purpose of UAT is to ensure that the software meets the business requirements and is ready for real-world use by verifying its functionality, reliability, and stability from an end-user's perspective. To conduct UAT effectively, business stakeholders or actual users who will be using the system perform tests based on real-life scenarios to validate that the system can handle required tasks in real-world environments. This process usually happens after the QA (Quality Assurance) team has certified that the software is bug-free and meets the predefined quality standards.