5 collaborate with developers and product owners
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