Acceptance criteria

An acceptance criteria is a way to describe the expected behavior from an application.

Communication is key

The acceptance criteria primary role is to communicate.

That is why they are often written in plain English or pseudo English to make it easier to read for non tech people as it is a great way to share knowledge between the business teams and the engineering ones.

That way both teams can work autonomously without being blocked by the other one.

An atomic form

As acceptance criterias have to be exhaustive to prevent forgetting a possibility, it is key that each of one them describe only one linear scenario.

That way it is possible to keep the acceptance criterias simple and less error prone.

The AAA framework

To make it easier to write and verify completeness from an acceptance criteria it is possible to use the AAA framework.

The AAA framework divide acceptance criteria into three steps:

• Arrange: This step describe the initial state from the application.
• Act: The logic tested is listed into that step.
• Assert: The expected final state from the application is compared to the current one.

It is possible to use the Gerkhin syntax to make sure to respect the AAA framework inside your acceptance criterias.