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Writing Acceptance Criteria
Purpose
The purpose of the Acceptance Criteria section is to ensure that all functionality requested in a Functional Specification document are collected into quantifiable statements. Acceptance criteria should summarize all the operations requested from the software.
General Structure
The Acceptance Criteria section of a Functional Specification document generally consists of a bulleted or numbered outline. The outline generally follows the requirements of the Workflow section of the Functional Specification document.
The individual criteria are expressed in direct, clear statements of what the system should do at each outlined step in the workflow. These statements generally refer directly to what a user should be able to do (e.g., "A user must be able to resubmit a purchase order to the vendor.").
Subsections are generally included to indicate what additional steps a user might take, or what output should be expected from the system (e.g., "The system must transmit an EDI file to the vendor containing the changes to be made to the purchase order.").
Coverage
User Stories
It is important that the acceptance criteria completely address the needs of the system. The first section to cover with acceptance criteria is the User Story section, which should consist of statements of a library staff role followed by a necessary duty to be performed by that staff member (e.g., "As a Unit Manager/Supervisor, I process payment of invoices and apply to individual order records.").
Workflow
The acceptance criteria should also cover any specific, explicit requirements of the Workflow section of the Functional Specification document. The Workflow section is meant to contain a narrative description of the process being established by the document, and so may vary in form and content. It should, however, always contain statements describing actions to be taken by staff members of various roles throughout the workflow. These statements must be collected and distilled in the Acceptance Criteria section.
Implicit Criteria
The acceptance criteria must also cover any implicit requirements in the specification. If, for example, a Functional Specification document says, "A user with adequate permissions should be able to receive a purchase order containing an item in hand," then the acceptance criteria statement will begin with a statement like, "A user in the receiving role must be able to initiate receipt of a purchase order." That statement will be the heading of a section which should also include the implied acceptance criterion, "A user who does not belong to the receiving role must not be able to initiate receipt of a purchase order."
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