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Software Engineering vocabulary · Agile and Team Workflow

Acceptance criteria

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, acceptance criteria means: A list of specific conditions that a feature or user story must meet before the team and the product owner agree that it is done.

In Turkish: kabul kriterleri, kabul ölçütleri

How it is used

Written in the ticket, often in the form 'Given… When… Then…'. Testers use them to check the work. Developers ask 'What are the acceptance criteria?' when a ticket is unclear.

Example sentences

  1. The acceptance criteria say the export must also work for files over 10 MB.

  2. This ticket has no acceptance criteria, so I don't know when it's finished.

Common collocations

  • meet the acceptance criteria
  • define acceptance criteria
  • write acceptance criteria
  • Given-When-Then
  • user storyA short description of a feature from the user's point of view, often written as 'As a [type of user], I want [goal] so that [reason]'.
  • requirementSomething the software must do, or a condition it must meet, as agreed with users, clients or the product team.
  • ticketA record in a tracking tool such as Jira that describes one piece of work, like a bug, task or feature, and shows who owns it and its status.
  • UATShort for user acceptance testing: the last testing stage, in which real users or the client check that the software meets their needs before it goes live.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Agile and Team Workflow

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