Acceptance Criteria
A set of predefined conditions that a feature or user story must satisfy to be accepted as complete by the product owner or stakeholders.
Acceptance criteria bridge the gap between a user story's intent and testable outcomes. They are typically written in plain language and define the boundaries of a feature: what it should do, what it should not do, and any constraints or edge cases. The 'Given/When/Then' format (from Behavior-Driven Development) is a popular structure.
Well-written acceptance criteria are specific, testable, and complete. Vague criteria like 'the page should load fast' are replaced with measurable ones like 'the page should reach Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds on a 4G connection.'
Why It Matters for QA Teams
Acceptance criteria are the foundation QA teams use to build test cases. Without clear criteria, testers are guessing what 'done' means, and disagreements surface late when they are expensive to resolve.
Example
User Story: As a user, I want to filter search results by price range.
Acceptance Criteria:
Given I am on the search results page, when I set a minimum price of $10 and a maximum of $50, then only products priced between $10 and $50 are displayed.
Given I set an invalid range (min > max), then an error message 'Minimum price must be less than maximum price' is shown.
Given no products match my range, then a 'No results found' message is displayed.