Collaborate with developers and product owners Performing automation testing in the application development life cycle is crucial to quickly verify the application is of high quality and bug-free. There are multiple aspects to testing to ensure that the application is of robust quality and meets the user’s requirements such as Regression testing, Visual regression testing, performance testing. Acceptance criteria and user stories are the two crucial aspects of a comprehensive application development process.

In application development and testing, achieving a market-fit application that meets users’ needs and requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria both are essential. They are the main formats of documenting requirements that form the foundation for successful application. Although they are closely related, each serves distinct functions in the development process.

User stories aim to describe what the user wants the application to do. It provides a high-level understanding of a feature from the end user’s perspective. Whereas, the acceptance criteria are essentially the tests that an application must pass to demonstrate that it has met all the user requirements. They are more technical, focusing on explaining the conditions that a specific user story must satisfy.

While user stories describe the desired outcome, acceptance criteria outline the steps to achieve that outcome by offering a checklist ensuring the feature behaves as intended from an end-user perspective.

In this article, we will explore how developers and product owners can collaborate to define acceptance criteria for user stories to drive their testing process. We will also provide an overview of the importance of acceptance criteria for user stories and when it should be created for effective user stories. Lastly, we will discuss some tips to define acceptance criteria for user stories that will help developers align their testing efforts with user expectations, enhance collaboration, and deliver high-quality applications. But before we do that, it is important to first understand what acceptance criteria and user stories are.

What are the acceptance criteria?

Acceptance criteria are a set of several prerequisites and conditions to validate an application meets its requirements to be accepted by end users to consider a user story to be finished.  They verify the application’s development and ensure that its behaviors and functionalities operate as intended, without any flaws or bugs. The acceptance criteria specifically state the conditions for fulfilling the user story and satisfying the product owner and the end user who will be interacting with it.

They aim to define a product’s expected behaviors, functionalities, and outcomes, but they do not delve into finding out the specific steps to achieve these outcomes or implement a specific functionality. This is because the purpose of acceptance criteria is to state the aim, not the solution.

Acceptance criteria are sometimes also referred to as the “definition of done” because they determine the scope and requirements to be executed by developers by taking all possible scenarios into account and considering the user story to be finished. This is because they give developers the context needed to execute a user story.

In short, they specify the conditions under which a user story can be said to be ‘done’. When the team meets all the criteria, they set the task aside and move on to the next story.

Traits of an effective acceptance criteria

A good acceptance criterion possesses some specific qualities. Therefore while creating acceptance criteria, the following should be kept in mind.

• They should be clear and concise so that all team members can easily understand. It should also provide necessary information avoiding unnecessary detail that creates confusion.
• They should be achievable and testable; that is should be written in the context of a real user’s experience.
• Must align with the project’s objectives so that testers can determine whether it has been met or not.
• Another important aspect of acceptance criteria is that they should be defined before the team starts working on a specific user story. Otherwise, there are chances that deliverables will not meet the needs and expectations of users.

Keep a note here that acceptance criteria describe what the result should be, not the process of achieving it.

What are user stories?

A user story is essential and the first step to excellent application development. It helps to clearly define what users want, this as a result encourages collaboration among developers, testers, and stakeholders so that they can work together and create an application that meets their needs and provides a more satisfying user experience.

It also helps development teams to identify potential issues and challenges early in the development process allowing them to focus on the most important features first. This as a result, leads to a better result. The purpose of user stories is to fully understand why and what problem needs to be solved, but it does not focus on the solution. The teams move to creating acceptance criteria once the user story is complete.

Importance of acceptance criteria for user stories

The criteria reflect what the users want instead of what the developers think they want. More often, user stories can be vague and open to interpretation if not defined correctly. In that case, it is possible for functional requirements to match with user stories but not reflect their intent. Acceptance criteria help teams to identify that the user story was correctly interpreted into the application’s functional requirements. Meaning helps them confirm that they will match user expectations and desires.

Acceptance criteria also help development teams sync up with the product owner’s expectations. This ensures development to lay down precisely what they are expected to meet.

When acceptance criteria should be created?

Before the beginning of development, acceptance criteria must be created.  Their use marks the point of development where the user story is finished satisfactorily. Well-written acceptance criteria keep away unexpected results at the end of a development stage and help to ensure that all stakeholders and users are satisfied with the final result.

Tips for collaborating with developers and product owners to define acceptance criteria for user stories

Acceptance criteria are needed for a user story to be considered done and ready for testing. They help in verifying the functionality, quality, and usability of the application. Product owners work efficiently with developers utilizing their skill set and various strategies to fully perform their responsibilities and achieve the goals of the organization. But managing and collaborating with them is not easy.

Therefore it is important to know the ways to collaborate with developers and product owners efficiently to define acceptance criteria for user stories. Below are some tips to help you.

Understanding the user story

In application development understanding the user’s needs is crucial. Therefore the first step in collaborating with developers and product owners on acceptance criteria is to understand the user story from an end-user perspective. That is defining the goal, value, and context of the user story.

This involves joint planning, collecting responses from other stakeholders and end users, asking questions, clarifying assumptions, refining user stories, and providing feedback to the product owner and the developer.

Furthermore, establishing a feedback loop to quickly address changes, and fostering a collaborative environment throughout development, is important. Techniques such as user personas, scenarios, and examples can also be utilized to illustrate the user story.

Maintaining continuous communication, conducting regular reviews, and giving feedback to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Defining the scope and boundaries

The next step in establishing smooth collaboration is to define the scope and boundaries of the user story. The most effective way to do this is by describing the main features, functions, processes, and interactions that the user story covers, like marking important locations and sharing documents with other users. Consider the non-functional requirements, like performance, security, and accessibility.

It also includes explaining the exceptions, errors, and edge cases that need to be handled. Techniques like acceptance test-driven development and behavior-driven development can be used to define the scope and boundaries in a testable and executable format, as they help draw a clear map to make testing easier.

Considering the definition of “done”

Another step to build collaboration with developers and product owners is to align the acceptance criteria with the definition of done (DoD). The DoD is a checklist that applies to all user stories and ensures that they are consistent, complete, and perfectly ready for delivery.

In other words, the DoD is a set of standards that include criteria such as code quality, documentation, testing, integration, and deployment.  Hence it is important to collaborate with the product owner and the developer to check if acceptance criteria meet this checklist and if there are any gaps or conflicts.

Contributing to writing acceptance criteria

There is no one specifically allocated for writing acceptance criteria for user stories, anyone on the team could write acceptance criteria for user stories. Usually, the product owner or product manager gets this responsibility because they better understand the needs of the users and hold the vision for the final product outcome so they can ensure that acceptance criteria are written from the perspective of the end user.

However, to collaborate with developers and product owners to define acceptance criteria for user stories, it is recommended to make this practice a group activity where everyone, including developers, testers, and QA representatives, can take part. This will foster better understanding across the team as to what the feature will entail. The more team members share activities, the better, as this gives more opportunities for team collaboration and discussions.

Putting efforts on the same goal makes work better. For instance, there could be some functionality, dependency, or scenario that one member may miss out on, but the other person will be able to identify that, simply because a different individual handles the problem from a different angle.

Reviewing and refining

Lastly, for effective collaboration with the product owner and the developers requires reviewing and refining the acceptance criteria. Utilizing techniques like peer review, user feedback, or prototyping helps in validating and improving the acceptance criteria. Tools like checklists, templates, or guidelines can be used to ensure that the acceptance criteria are clear, concise, and consistent. Additionally, prioritize the acceptance criteria based on their importance, complexity, and risk.

Identify acceptance criteria for user stories by running acceptance tests on LambdaTest

Acceptance criteria are the basis of the user story, and it is determined by acceptance testing. User stories can also be verified via automated tests using acceptance criteria.

Acceptance testing is a testing approach where the application is tested for acceptability. It is the last phase of the testing process; once most of the bugs are fixed and verified, this testing takes the role. It validates the functionality and the acceptance of the application from the end user’s perspective and assesses that the application meets user requirements and expectations.

To streamline acceptance testing and accelerate the application release it is essential to run acceptance tests using best-automated tools that are compatible with the testing need. LambdaTest is one such test automation solution that can automate test cases efficiently. In addition to this, it eases the work, saves time, and ensures the application’s reliability.

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform to run both manual and automated tests at scale and meet testing demands. Using this platform, testers can test their application’s performance under varying conditions, ensuring it meets end users’ expectations.

The platform also provides testers access to more than 3000 environments, real devices, and browsers, to perform both real-time and automation testing of web and mobile apps to ensure fast test execution. This eliminates the challenges concerning the scalability, reliability, and infrastructure cost of maintaining in-house device labs,

In short, LambdaTest is an easy-to-use test automation platform that ensures that the application meets the users’ needs by turning user stories into automated tests and executing them quickly and efficiently. By conducting automated tests consistently and reliably, LambdaTest helps to reduce the chances of human error and saves time by completing tests quickly.

Conclusion

Acceptance criteria are an important aspect of every user story that the team works on. It clearly defines the scope, desired result, and testing criteria functionalities that the delivery team is working on. A user story can only be interpreted when the acceptance criteria are defined, provide complete clarity on the expected outcomes, and both the users and the developer can sync with the functionality that a user story will provide.

The process of creating and agreeing on acceptance criteria provides the opportunity for better communication and collaboration among developers and product owners.