Glossary

What is Acceptance Criteria?

The specific conditions that must be true for a story or task to be 'done'.

Acceptance criteria are the test cases (in plain English) that define when a piece of work is complete. They turn vague stories ('improve the dashboard') into clear contracts ('the KPI block loads within 500ms; the new tile appears between Tasks and Leads; the test suite is green'). Written before work starts, they prevent the 'are we done?' debate at sprint review.

When to use

If you can't write acceptance criteria for a task, it's not ready to start - it's still a research item. Move it back to refinement.

Related terms

User Story

A small piece of work written from the user's perspective: 'As a [user], I want [goal], so that [benefit].'

Definition of Done

A team-level checklist of conditions that apply to EVERY task before it can be marked complete (tested, reviewed, documented, deployed).

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