Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Acceptance Criteria

Another practice that Leslie and I have found helpful for writing good user stories is to create acceptance criteria at the time a user story is written. In essence, acceptance criteria is what helps the team confirm that what is created actually satisfies the so that clause of the story. In other words, if you can meet the defined acceptance criteria, chances are good that you’ve delivered the expected value of the user story. Of course, you won’t know for sure that you’ve provided the anticipated value until you get feedback from actual customers, but defining acceptance criteria is a great way to help minimize any gaps between what is built and what stakeholders expect. Said another way, defining good acceptance criteria, ...