One of the teams I have recently coached quickly got a grasp of how to phrase user stories but found it hard to relate to the concept of acceptance criteria.

I wrote this short FAQ as an attempt to make it easier for my team to work with acceptance criteria and hope that other teams might find this useful too:

What’s the purpose of acceptance criteria?

Acceptance criteria*:

Define the boundaries for a user story/feature

Help the product owner answer what she needs in order for this feature to provide value (typically these are the minimum functional requirements)

Help the team gain a shared understanding of the story/feature

        Help developers and testers to derive tests

Help developers know when to stop adding  more functionality to a story

*The little pictures above are created by Nathanael Coyne (@nathanaelb). 

What are good acceptance criteria?

Good acceptance criteria:

  • State an intent not a solution (e.g. “The user can choose an account” rather than “The user can select the account from a drop-down”)
  • Are independent of implementation (ideally the phrasing would be the same regardless whether this feature/story would be implemented on e.g. web, mobile or a voice activated system)
  • Are relatively high level (not every detail needs to be in writing)

Can you give a good example?

Example user story:
As an internet banking customer
I want to see a rolling balance for my everyday accounts
so that I know the balance of my account after each transaction is applied

Example acceptance criteria:

  • The rolling balance is displayed
  • The rolling balance is calculated for each transaction
  • The balance is displayed for every transaction for the full period of time transactions are available
  • The balance is not displayed if a filter has been applied

Another example user story:
As a Snapper cardholder
I want to be able to pick up my pending credit from MySnapper (Note: MySnapper is a client applications for users to top up their ePurse, check their balance etc)
so that I have money on my ePurse

Example acceptance criteria:

  • I can see on MySnapper that there are pending credit(s) for my card
  • I can choose which credit(s) to pick up
  • I can see my new purse balance when I have chosen to pick up a credit
  • I can’t top up my card or buy a pass when there are pending credits for my card

(Personally, I like the “I”-format for acceptance criteria to keep focus on the user perspective rather than system centric view.)

Where do the details go?

What about details such as e.g.:

  • The column heading is “Balance”
  • The rolling balance format is 99,999,999,999.9 D/CR
  • We should use a dropdown rather than checkboxes

These kind of details normally come up in the conversation about the story with the product owner. This would be at the sprint planning meeting or when the team starts coding this particular story.

The details the team capture before coding go into two places:

1. Team internal documentation
The purpose of team internal documentation is solely to serve as a reminder for (potentially forgetful) team members. How much of the details need to be written down depends on the team and whether people write down any details at all is entirely up to them. (Note that this is different from external documentation such as e.g. a user guide which would be part of scope)

2. Automated acceptance tests
Acceptance criteria can be expressed in (almost) plain English for use by the chosen testing framework. This means that tests provide value as documentation, automated acceptance tests and as a feedback loop for developers doing BDD (An example using Cucumber here: http://cukes.info/ )

ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA FOR USER STORIES的更多相关文章

  1. USER STORIES AND USE CASES - DON’T USE BOTH

    We’re in Orlando for a working session as part of the Core Team building BABOK V3 and over dinner th ...

  2. Software development --daily scrum team

    History[edit] Scrum was first defined as "a flexible, holistic product development strategy whe ...

  3. AngularJS in Action读书笔记1——扫平一揽子专业术语

    前(fei)言(hua): 数月前,以一个盲人摸象的姿态看了一些关于AngularJS的视频书籍,留下了我个人的一点或许是指点迷津或许是误人子弟的读后感.自以为已经达到熟悉ng的程度,但是因为刚入公司 ...

  4. [C1] Andrew Ng - AI For Everyone

    About this Course AI is not only for engineers. If you want your organization to become better at us ...

  5. DoD and DoR

    Definition of Ready User Story is defined Acceptance criteria(functional and non-functional requirem ...

  6. Difinition Of Done

    A Story is Sprint ready (Rally Defined) when............. The story has well defined and testable ac ...

  7. REST: C#调用REST API (zz)

    由于辞职的原因,最近正在忙于找工作.在这段期间收到了一家公司的上机测试题,一共两道题,其中一道题是关于REST API的应用.虽然在面试时,我已经说过,不懂REST,但那面试PM还是给了一道这题让我做 ...

  8. Project Management Process

    Project Management ProcessDescription .............................................................. ...

  9. 项目中PO、PM的职责区分

    PO是product owner,是一个role,负责与stakeholders打交道,提炼stakeholders的需求,按照需求的价值以及紧急程度安排优先级.PO是一个角色,对product ba ...

随机推荐

  1. jeecg bootstrap修改单列模版

    在作者原来的模版上增强单列模版 <%@ page language="java" import="java.util.*" contentType=&qu ...

  2. nodejs实现一个简单的爬虫

    nodejs是js语言,实现一个爬出非常的方便. 步骤 1. 使用nodejs的request模块,获取目标页面的html代码:https://github.com/request/request 2 ...

  3. js_闭包

    先从闭包特点解释,应该更好理解.闭包的两个特点:1.作为一个函数变量的一个引用 - 当函数返回时,其处于激活状态.2.一个闭包就是当一个函数返回时,一个没有释放资源的栈区.其实上面两点可以合成一点,就 ...

  4. C#网络编程数据传输中封装数据帧头的方法

    在C/S端编程的时候,经常要在C端和S端之间传数据时自定义一下报文的帧头,如果是在C/C++,封装帧头是一件很简单的事情,直接把unsigned char *强转为struct就行,但是在C#中,并没 ...

  5. HDU 1754 I Hate It 线段树单点更新求最大值

    题目链接 线段树入门题,线段树单点更新求最大值问题. #include <iostream> #include <cstdio> #include <cmath> ...

  6. 将做好的py文件打包成模块,供别人安装调用

    现在要将写完的3个py文件,打包. 步骤: 1.新建一个文件夹setup(名字随便取),在setup文件夹下,再新建一个文件夹financeapi. 2.将上面4个py文件拷贝至financeapi文 ...

  7. hbase 的体系结构

    hbase的服务体系遵从的是主从结构,由HRegion(服务器)-HRegionServer(服务器集群)-HMaster(主服务器)构成, 从图中能看出多个HRegion 组成一个HRegionSe ...

  8. 【Java并发系列04】线程锁synchronized和Lock和volatile和Condition

    img { border: solid 1px } 一.前言 多线程怎么防止竞争资源,即防止对同一资源进行并发操作,那就是使用加锁机制.这是Java并发编程中必须要理解的一个知识点.其实使用起来还是比 ...

  9. IIS设置默认主页无效

    服务器系统:Windows server 2008 R2 IIS版本:7.5 IIS中部署一个dotnet framework 3.5的网站应用程序,设置"默认文档"为:index ...

  10. Beginning Scala study note(3) Object Orientation in Scala

    1. The three principles of OOP are encapsulation(封装性), inheritance(继承性) and polymorphism(多态性). examp ...