Definition
ref: link Acceptance criteria are a set of statements that describes the conditions a software product or a project deliverable must satisfy in order for the User Story to be accepted by a Product Owner, user, customer, or other stakeholder. Acceptance criteria are incredibly important in Scrum because they spell out what a development team needs to accomplish for a given Sprint.
- Whenever a user story is written the product owner and the team collaborate to determine the AC of
the story.
- Acceptance criteria should state intent but not list the steps to produce the solution.
Example
ref: link
- Code peer reviewed?
- Code completed?
- Code reviewed?
- Code checked-in?
- Unit tests passed?
- Functional tests passed?
- Acceptance tests completed?
- Product Owner reviewed and accepted?
The goals of Acceptance Criteria
- Clarify what the team should build before they start work
- Ensure everyone has a common understanding of the problem
- Help the team members know when the Story is complete
- Help verify the Story via automated tests.
Example – Acceptance Criteria
- A user cannot submit a form without completing all the mandatory fields
- Information from the form is stored in the registrations database
- Payment can be made via credit card
- An acknowledgment email is sent to the user after submitting the form
Example of User Story with Acceptance Criteria
The figure below shows an example of acceptance criteria of a user story.
