Question 1

What are acceptance criteria?

Accepted Answer

The specific, testable conditions a user story must satisfy for the team to consider it complete, translating a story’s general intent into concrete, verifiable statements.

Question 2

How are acceptance criteria different from the Definition of Done?

Accepted Answer

Acceptance criteria are specific to one individual user story. The Definition of Done is a universal, standing checklist applied identically to every story in a project, regardless of what that story is about.

Question 3

What is the Given/When/Then format?

Accepted Answer

A scenario-oriented way of writing acceptance criteria, borrowed from behavior-driven development, describing a starting state (Given), a user action (When), and the expected, observable outcome (Then).

Question 4

What is rule-oriented acceptance criteria?

Accepted Answer

A simpler, bulleted checklist of conditions that must hold true, without narrating a specific sequence of user actions, well suited to business rules and validation logic.

Question 5

Can a story use both formats at once?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Many experienced teams combine Given/When/Then for describing workflows with rule-oriented bullets for validation logic or edge cases, using whichever format fits a given aspect of the story.

Question 6

How many acceptance criteria should a user story have?

Accepted Answer

A commonly cited guideline suggests roughly one to three per story. A story with four or more, especially complex ones, is often a signal it should be split into smaller pieces.

Question 7

Why should acceptance criteria avoid negative statements?

Accepted Answer

Because conditions describing what must not happen are often nearly impossible to verify exhaustively, and are usually clearer when rewritten as a positive, specific statement of the expected behavior.

Question 8

When should acceptance criteria be written?

Accepted Answer

Before development begins, ideally during backlog refinement or sprint planning, not after coding has already started, since writing them late invites rework based on incorrect assumptions.

Question 9

What is the biggest mistake in confusing acceptance criteria with the Definition of Done?

Accepted Answer

Either duplicating the universal Definition of Done inside every story’s criteria, wasting time, or skipping story-specific criteria because the Definition of Done feels like it already covers completeness.

Question 10

Should acceptance criteria change once a sprint has started?

Accepted Answer

Generally not. Scrum principles treat mid-sprint changes to acceptance criteria as the exception rather than the rule, since alterations can lead to rework and jeopardize the team’s commitments.

What Are Acceptance Criteria in User Stories?

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Q1: What are acceptance criteria?

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