Acceptance Criteria

Agile and Scrum / By

What is it ?

Acceptance Criteria or Acceptance tests as a set of conditions that must be met before a user story is deemed done. They are a set of conditions that must be fulfilled by the solution for it to be deemed accepted by the user or a customer.

These a set of statements which have a clear pass/fail result that specify both functional and non functional requirements that are applicable a user story or an EPIC .

Why is it useful ?

Acceptance criteria are useful for a user story as it:

  1. Helps in enhance the details of the user stories
  2. Helps explicitly identify requirements that are implicit in the user story
  3. Sets rules for the system behavior
  4. Helps in identifying functional and non-functional requirements

They help identify and point to the things that the product owner and stakeholders need in the place for the story to be deemed completely implemented and satisfies their need.  Acceptance criteria focus on the business need of the product rather than technical requirements thus helping the team to provide a solution to the problem.

Let’s understand with an example:

An example :

As John, I want to login safely into my bank website to view my accounts.

The acceptance tests for the same maybe:

  1. The password should be looked into from the Database
  2. Security will be DB and SSL
  3. Should allow the use of virtual keyboard
  4. Should have a reset password link to take to rest password page
  5. Should give warning that after 3 failed attempt will lock
  6. Should lock password after 3 failed attempts
  7. Should display message if ban website is under maintenance
  8. Should display the do and don’t
  9. Should display the security level provided
  10. Should display an online demo link for first time users
  11. Should allow creating a new user.

 When to use it ?

Acceptance criteria are used more often to provide details for a user stories so that the team can identify features and scope of the user stories.  This helps the team to break the stories in technical tasks and also helps in correctly sizing the user story. Team may then add acceptance criteria as they discuss the project further, understand the story better and get closer to delivering the solution.

Why use it ?

Acceptance criteria help  the team  to place the user story in the product model and gets the details of the model.  They help us to further our understanding on the product solution.  They may point to other user stories and help us defining them.  Like in the example above there are clearly 3 stories that are attached to this one.

How to use it ?

The following are the steps that the team can use to create Acceptance criteria:

  1. Meet with the stakeholders who are interested in the user story , someone with development perspective, and someone with testing perspective and give them a white board.
  2. Discuss the user story
  3. Ask what all they think will be need to complete the solution. Ask open ended questions. 
  4. Ask what tests need to conducted to verify the user story
  5. Put all on the white board
  6. Ask specifically all tests that need to be covered.
  7. Decide if you want to split the story else note all the Acceptance criteria in your story card and put back in the product backlog.

Considerations.

Remember to express the Acceptance Criteria from a business perspective in short, clear and directive way.

About Dharmalingam N

Dharmalingam.N holds a master degree in Business Administration and writes on a wide range of topics ranging from technology to business analysis. He has a background in Relationship Management. Some of the topics he has written about and that have been published include; project management, business analysis and customer engagement.

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