In this phase of the release cycle, the new release will be available in the QA environment and now all of the planning for the upgrade acceptance testing can be applied. It is expected that during this phase all acceptance testings will be performed, their outcomes will be evaluated, issues and errors will be logged and resolved, and the release will be validated.

While in the Release phase of the Pricefx implementation, it is the best time to begin the active acceptance testing phase of the release cycle. As part of this phase, the following questions should be discussed:

Are my acceptance tests successful?
If any acceptance test is failing, how am I logging these errors?
Are acceptance errors in the Pricefx Core or are they within my solution’s Configuration?
Who is responsible for correcting any acceptance errors?
Have all of my acceptance test cases been identified and created?

Release Available Phase Tasks

Before starting the upgrade acceptance testing, the impact of the following should be considered:

Upgrade Testing Process

Testing in QA is the customer’s opportunity to assess how the upgrade will impact their Production from both a change and risk perspective. For example, to reveal if changes or updates would be needed to SSO or ERP integrations, or help bring superusers up to speed on the new release.

If no upgrade testing is performed, then all issues, misunderstandings, or problems encountered later are resolved under COSA. If these issues are not discovered and resolved before the upgrade, then the production application will be temporarily unavailable until resolved.

Upgrade Test Plan

Existence or creation of an organized and disciplined approach to upgrade testing, is important in avoiding any undiscovered gaps in the test plan that could lead to potential problems. A common symptom is when testers are performing tests without proper preparation and prioritization of critical functionality. There should always be a clear prioritization of specific test cases.

LEARN MORE: To learn more about the development of a Test Plan, guidelines, and recommendations for this task, click here.

Time Allocation

Ensure that the team of selected testers has the necessary time to perform the test cases assigned to them due to the volume of their other work. Without the proper time allocation to fulfill the upgrade test plan in its entirety undiscovered gaps in the upgrade preparation will inevitably appear.

Upgrade Preparation During Release

During the Release period of the upgrade cycle, and as a best practice, Pricefx recommends that these steps to be performed:

Logging Bugs

As the upgrade testing progresses and various issues are discovered, these errors need to be logged so fixes can be applied and then re-tested. Any errors discovered should be prioritized using the following suggested set of categories:

Priority	Explanation

Priority	Explanation
CRITICAL	User is unable to use the solution, resulting in a critical impact on business operations. This condition requires immediate resolution. (i.e. The system is down)
HIGH	Any high priority defect which results in an incorrect price calculation. No workaround is available, and the defect is time sensitive. (i.e. Defect is blocking pricing from being exported to ERP systems)
MEDIUM	The defect requires attention but does not block pricing utilization. A workaround is available but may not be optimal. (i.e. Defect requires the user to perform manual calculations)
LOW	Minor loss of functionality. These may be monitoring issues, clarifications, documentation questions, or administrative tasks. (i.e. Update the column label or any other cosmetic related defects)

Each of the testers should be logging their results every day. If an issue is discovered, then the appropriate level of documentation to assist in fixing the issue should be provided (i.e. expected vs. actual result, error messages, screenshots, etc).

LEARN MORE: To learn more about the practice of logging and cataloging any errors that are encountered, click here.

Code Promotion

Once all of the test cases have been performed and the results have been verified, it is time to promote the core code from the QA system to the PROD environment.

Upgrade Smoke Test

The final step of the checklist will be the performance of a smoke test or build verification test to determine if all of the most critical functions of the application are performing as expected. This is a preliminary test of the new upgrade and its functionality.

LEARN MORE: To learn more about resolutions to common issues related to Pricefx upgrades, click here.