UAT is an important phase of any project because it doesn't matter how many functional and unit tests are performed—the system may still behave differently when tested with real business data and by actual end users. The following are the critical reasons why we should perform UAT:

• It provides an opportunity to verify functional test cases before the system is used by end users.
• It provides optimal opportunities to identify issues and fix them at an early stage.
• It helps improve the quality of the system based on the client's feedback.
• As UAT is done by the end users and clients, it verifies whether a new system is developed based on client specifications or not.
• It helps us get final confirmation from the client before the system is ready for production.

To conduct UAT, the following steps should be taken:

1. Planning and preparing a UAT checklist: The first step is to plan UAT activities, and preparing the UAT checklist helps us stay focused. We can follow this checklist in order to make UAT successful. This checklist should include all the tasks that we are going to perform during the UAT phase. This helps us understand which of the tasks are completed and which of the tasks are not completed.
2. Define the acceptance criteria: Before conducting UAT, it is very important to prepare acceptance criteria. UAT acceptance criteria may include only critical business processes because it's not practical to test a complete application again during the UAT phase. The project manager should work with the customer to identify critical business requirements and prioritize them. All the acceptance criteria should be documented for the UAT sign-off.
3. Identify key users: UAT is performed by key users, which include different types of users such as admin users, also known as power users; executives; managers; and team members. It is important to get a user list from the customer to set up their users before UAT begins. After setting up the users, we need to also set up their security roles based on their job profiles to make sure they have access to areas that are relevant to their day-to-day duties.
4. Set up the UAT environment: Another important task is to set up the environment for UAT. It is important to conduct UAT in a separate environment, which should be similar to the production environment. It may contain a copy of historical data, if any, or should have sample business data where end users can perform their testing.
5. Train key users: This is another important step where we should train key users and stakeholders so that they are familiar with the new system. They may be using an old system with different navigation, so in the new system, they should be aware of the new navigation in order to access their work area.
6. Assisting key users during UAT: Even though we will have provided training to key users, it is important to assist them during the UAT phase. A team of functional consultants can be assigned to help key users. This helps us complete UAT in the agreed time.

7. Listening to key users: During the UAT phase, it is important to hear key users' feedback about the new system. It helps increase the usability of the system as key users may suggest some UI changes to make them more comfortable with the new system.
8. Bug reporting procedure: Before UAT begins, we should have our UAT bug report process defined so that all the UAT members are aware of the procedure to report any bugs that occur during UAT. Later, those bugs should be collected, which helps us determine whether the current product is ready for production release or not.
9. UAT sign-off: Once UAT is over, we should get UAT sign-off from the UAT team. UAT sign-off verifies whether the product is ready for production use or not.

This is how we can perform UAT for our application or product. Now, let's learn how to prepare a user training plan.