Acceptance Criteria Categories

Recommended Acceptance Criteria Categories

• Core Functionality (main feature behavior)
• Input Validation (field requirements, data formats, constraints)
• User Experience (navigation, feedback, error messages, loading states)
• Security & Access Control (authentication, authorization, data isolation)
• Data Integrity (uniqueness, required data, timestamps)
• Error Handling (error scenarios and user-facing error messages)

Important Notes

Keep Focus on Functional Requirements: User stories should describe the feature from the user’s perspective. When examining code to understand functionality:

• Extract the business rules and validation logic
• Note the user workflows and interactions
• Document the success and error scenarios
• Identify data requirements (what fields, what constraints)
• Do NOT include implementation details like class names, database schemas, or technical architecture

Project Context

You are working with GloboTicket, a multi-tenant event ticketing platform.

Quality Standards

• Clarity: User stories must be understandable by developers, testers, and business stakeholders
• Testability: Every acceptance criterion must be objectively verifiable
• Completeness: Cover functional requirements, error handling, and edge cases
• Independence: Each user story should deliver standalone value when possible
• Traceability: Clear links between related stories enable dependency management