Bob TarneAgile Coach| AccentureLexington, Ky, United States
How do you write acceptance criteria for an agile user story? I've seen some developers that insist the acceptance criteria be fully developed before they will accept a story. On the other extreme, I know some people don't have any criteria. One side brings us toward iterative agile, the other extreme can make it challenging to decide when a story is done. Is there a happy medium? Saving Changes...
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Kendall AaronLead Development Product Owner| USAASan Antonio, Tx, United States
Having Acceptance Criteria as a required field (so to speak). The benefits of having acceptance criteria is felt. When AC satisfies the product owner during Sprint Review and no or very few issues were found is a great feeling. The development team will feel that on the back-end as having no technical debt, freeing up their time. Another question I think to ask is who is best to write acceptance criteria. Saving Changes...
Michael CliffordRegion Contract Service Manager| ServiceLiveBrockton, Ma, United States
I found an good, brief article with tips for acceptance criteria, as I was searching for similar information.
Tim McDonaldPM Consultant| TRM Professional ConsultingHudsonville, Mi, United States
I'm of the belief that every user story should have at least one acceptance criteria. If the three-part User Story is written well ("As a type of user, I want to perform some task, So that I can achieve some goal."). Then at least one acceptance is really easy to write using the following "formula" -- "Type of user can perform some task."
Example (#2) from Michael Clifford's link (previous post).
User Story: "As a teacher, I want to generate assessment report, so I can evaluate student performance."
Acceptance Criteria: "Teacher can generate assessment report."
I've successfully used this technique with excel formulas when given the task of creating acceptance criteria for over 200 requirements ("user stories"). The only adjustments needed were when there were multiple user types. Saving Changes...
