Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria are the checkable conditions under which a requirement or user story is considered met. The GOV.UK Service Manual describes them as a list of outcomes used as a checklist to confirm that the service has done its job, often written as “it’s done when…”. Their purpose is to fix the pass rule before anyone sees a result.

Name the population, the check, and the rule

For a lookup of matching permitted records, define 200 reference cases: 180 with an agreed non-empty set of expected records and 20 with no match. Fix each case’s user identity and source data version. A case passes only when the returned record set equals the expected set, source identifiers and timestamps agree with the reference, and the result status is correct. Each no-match case must return an empty set with an explicit no-match status. Missing required records, extra or unauthorized records, duplicates, and incorrect statuses fail the case. The example passes only if all 200 cases pass. Returning nothing for every case therefore fails the 180 match cases. “Search works correctly” defines none of these checks.

Add who judges the evidence and what is kept. The owner of the requirement, not the supplier, decides whether the criterion is met, and the test cases, outputs, and comparison are retained so that someone else can repeat the judgment.

Match the method to the claim

A criterion can be verified by test, demonstration, inspection, or analysis. A contractual restriction on data use is verified by reading the contract; a permission rule is verified by trying allowed and denied requests on every path that can carry a record. A demonstration on the vendor’s sample shows behavior on that sample only.

Passing in a finite sample does not prove a zero error rate in production; state the sample and the remaining uncertainty. Criteria are agreed before results are collected, and changing them afterward changes the question that was answered. If a criterion turns out to be wrong, revise it openly and record why.

Reference: GOV.UK Service Manual: Writing user stories. Examples and figures here are illustrative.