Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria are the conditions that a software product must meet to be accepted by a user, a customer, or other system. They are unique for each user story and define the feature behavior from the end-user’s perspective. Well-written acceptance criteria help avoid unexpected results in the end of a development stage and ensure that all stakeholders and users are satisfied with what they get.

Main purposes of the Acceptance Criteria is clarifying the stakeholder’s requirements.

Some of the criteria are defined and written by the product owner when he or she creates the product backlog. And the others can be further specified by the team during user stories discussions after sprint planning.

  • Acceptance Criteria have to be written before development starts.

  • Acceptance Criteria shouldn’t be too narrow.

  • Acceptance Criteria have to be achievable in one sprint iteration.

  • Acceptance Criteria have to be measurable and not too broad.

  • Acceptance Criteria shouldn’t contain Technical Details

  • Acceptance Criteria have to be understandable by all Scrum Team members

  • Acceptance Criteria have to be testable

Acceptance Criteria should contain;

  • Feature scope detalization

    Acceptance Criteria define the boundaries of user stories. They provide precise details on functionality that help the team understand whether the story is completed and works as expected.

  • Describing negative scenarios

    Acceptance Criteria may require the system to recognize unsafe password inputs and prevent a user from proceeding further. Invalid password format is an example of a so-called negative scenario when a user does invalid inputs or behaves unexpectedly. Acceptance Criteria define these scenarios and explain how the system must react on them.

  • Setting communication

    Acceptance criteria synchronize the visions of the client and the development team. They ensure that everyone has a common understanding of the requirements: Developers know exactly what kind of behavior the feature must demonstrate, while stakeholders and the client understand what’s expected from the feature.

  • Streamlining acceptance testing

    Acceptance criteria are the basis of the user story acceptance testing. Each acceptance criterion must be independently testable and thus have a clear pass or fail scenarios. They can also be used to verify the story via automated tests

  • Feature estimation

    Acceptance criteria specify what exactly must be developed by the team. Once the team has precise requirements, they can split user stories into tasks that can be correctly estimated.

Acceptance Criteria Template for User Story

Scenario the name for the behavior that will be described
Given the beginning state of the scenario
When specific action that the user makes
Then the outcome of the action in “When”
And used to continue any of three previous statements

Example;

User story: As a user, I want to be able to recover the password to my account, so that I will be able to access my account in case I forgot the password.

Scenario: Forgot password
Given: The user has navigated to the login page
When: The user selected forgot password option
And: Entered a valid email to receive a link for password recovery
Then: The system sent the link to the entered email
Given: The user received the link via the email
When: The user navigated through the link received in the email
Then: The system enables the user to set a new password

Source: https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/business/acceptance-criteria-purposes-formats-and-best-practices/