Re: Special
On one side you get the supplier trying to pull the wool over your eyes and whispering to your higher level management that you're not up to the job or, even worse, you're being 'unreasonable'. On the other side, you get your own higher management blaming you if it doesn't pass because of 'minor and easily fixed' shortfalls
It's a game. A nasty, brutal, sociopathic game, but a game nonetheless.
Wherever you fit in the hierarchy, your job is to regulate pressure. You need to apply pressure downwards, into your own workload (and your underlings, if you're lucky enough to have any). But more importantly, you also need to apply it upwards to your own managers. If you don't tell them that the job is impossible and you need more something, they'll assume everything is fine. And if you don't tell them this on a daily basis, they'll assume that whatever you were complaining about yesterday is all sorted and they don't have to worry about it any more.
If your management is going to "blame" you for failing the software based on "minor and easily fixed shortfalls", then you don't really have signoff authority, and you need to explicitly delegate that authority (always upwards). Present your manager - daily, or weekly, whatever they'll tolerate - with a summary of all outstanding and resolved defects. (If you're feeling helpful, you could do some mathematical modelling and predict how long it will take to get the software into a state that meets the predefined UAT criteria, but that's risky, 'cuz you'll be held responsible for it.) But make it clear that you are prepared to continue testing at this rate until (a) your retirement, (b) the end of the world, or (c) the UAT criteria are fulfilled, whichever happens first, unless s/he - your manager - tells you to stop.
And when she does tell you to stop (or gives you another assignment, which is the same thing) - bingo, there's your signoff.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
