Acceptance Criteria Design

Overview

Use this skill to translate approved requirements into acceptance criteria that engineering and QA can execute without interpretation drift.

Scope Boundaries

• Use this skill when the task matches the trigger condition described in description.
• Do not use this skill when the primary task falls outside this skill’s domain.

Inputs To Gather

• Approved requirements (REQ-*) and relevant non-functional requirements (NFR-*).
• Business intent, out-of-scope boundaries, and policy constraints.
• User-visible behaviors, system side effects, and error paths.
• Test environment capabilities and observability limits.

Deliverables

• Acceptance criteria set with binary pass/fail expectations.
• Scenario matrix covering happy path, boundary, negative, and failure cases.
• Traceability map: requirement -> criterion -> verification method.
• Open ambiguity list that blocks objective verification.

Quality Standard

• Each criterion is independently testable and yields one clear result.
• Each criterion states preconditions, action, expected observable outcome, and evidence source.
• Boundary values, invalid inputs, authorization errors, and integration failure behavior are covered when applicable.
• Criteria describe required behavior, not implementation detail.
• Overlap and contradiction across criteria are removed.

Workflow

1. Normalize requirement intent and explicit assumptions.
2. Split requirements into observable behavior units.
3. Draft pass/fail criteria for normal, boundary, negative, and failure scenarios.
4. Define evidence sources (API response, UI state, logs, metrics, events) for each criterion.
5. Run ambiguity and overlap review; publish unresolved blockers.

Failure Conditions

• Stop when requirement intent is unstable or contradictory.
• Stop when a criterion cannot be verified with available test/observability capabilities.
• Escalate when missing instrumentation prevents objective pass/fail judgment.