UAT and how IT works

From Find out how “IT” works.

In this case, “IT” is not limited to information technology, but whatever “it” is – the requirements process, the project management process, the testing process, etc. The better you as a customer understand “it,” the more effective you will be in making “it” work for you.

Donna Corrigan from CoBank suggests: “When defining requirements, stay focused on value-added business requirements, not technology. Understand the user acceptance testing (UAT) schedule early on, and clear the calendars of UAT business staff during the UAT period.”

Bill Yock from The University of Washington says: "The most important thing a customer of a BI project should insist on is "World Class" training. Incorporate training on both the meaning of the data and the use of the business intelligence tools. Many BI projects invest too much in the ‘back room’ data loading and integration of warehouses and marts, and not enough in the ‘front door’ … educating and informing users on how to interpret, analyze and understand their information. One of our mission statements was ‘Free the Data.’ Unfortunately, once the data was free, nobody understood it. This led to lack of confidence in the ‘numbers’ and adoption of the BI tool hit a brick wall."

To be a good BI customer, figure out what “it” is and how you can proactively influence and invest time in requirements, data models, prioritization, governance, testing, training, etc. Don’t allow yourself to be so dependent that you passively sit back and wait for “IT” to make everything happen.

Testing contactless cards

From Contactless News

Taco Bell has become the latest national fast food chain to enter the contactless arena. It will be testing Visa contactless cards at 100 locations later this year with an eye towards implementing the technology at all 1,300 locations in 2008. The credit card giant also announced that a movie theater, a northeast supermarket operation and an ice cream chain are now accepting Visa contactless cards.

Visa USA announced that four significant national and regional merchants are the latest to accept Visa cards with embedded contactless payment technology, allowing consumers to use the convenience of this innovative technology to buy food, groceries and movie tickets at more than 3,000 new acceptance locations.

The four companies – Braum's Ice Cream and Dairy Stores; Clearview Cinemas; Wakefern Food Corporation, the merchandising and distribution arm of ShopRite supermarkets; and Taco Bell Corp. – are emblematic of the kind of merchants who have helped to make Visa Contactless cards the most rapidly adopted new payment technology in Visa’s history.

Visa Contactless technology enables customers to make purchases by simply holding their Visa Contactless cards near a secure reader at checkout instead of swiping them. The account information is securely transmitted by a tiny radio frequency chip embedded in the card.

Visa Contactless eliminates the signature requirement for most payments under $25, providing even greater convenience to customers making small ticket purchases. In addition, Visa Contactless maintains the level of security the industry has come to expect from Visa. A Visa card with the contactless feature never leaves the customer’s hand and can only be read at extremely close proximity to a contactless reader. In addition, the chip embedded in Visa Contactless cards generates data that is unique to each transaction, ensuring the same data cannot be used for fraudulent contactless transaction.

Testing Acceptance User