Comments on: Acceptance Criteria: Won’t Save You From the Zombie Apocalypse, But Still Useful

By: The Last Refuge of the Unimaginative Mind? « Gotta Start Somewhere

The Last Refuge of the Unimaginative Mind? « Gotta Start Somewhere — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:39:49 +0000

[...] Muddying up the spec will make other items of actual importance get missed, noise reduces signal, yadda yadda yadda. These are items that we have just determined will be standard, and as we get new additions [...]

By: Scott Bellware

Scott Bellware — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:27:54 +0000

Cat,

When a person is cutting into a shark to see if that little Kinter boy is inside, are they acting in the role of oceanographer?

A person’s role isn’t their job title, it’s their role – within the context of a story.

What if a paramedic living in a beach town with a visceral sense of shark viscera were to cut open the shark?

I’m not saying that within the context of your story that the role should or should not be ‘oceanographer’, but it raised some questions in my mind.

By: Efraim

Efraim — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:22:48 +0000

My process is simple:

Think it up using
http://www.MockupMagnets.com

If needed, make it nice using:
http://www.balsamiq.com

Snap a picture, send it to your outsourcers on:
http://www.odesk.com
and have them make a prototype

Usertest the prototype

Build it

By: David Laribee

David Laribee — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:59:11 +0000

“Additionally, the developers will be able to write better tests for the story as they are developing it.”

We have a pipeline for each story where developers put acceptance tests into a “ready” state. Our QA resource then verifies and places tests in a “pass” or “fail” state. They also decide whether or not to automate tests.

We call acceptance criteria “specifications” and are pretty loose about them after having gone the apprentice route of GWT/Context-Specification for 6 months.

Our UX people often write interaction/design specs in screen language. You say not to do this, but it works OK for us given we have dedicated UX talent. Even so, I’d call this a compromise as we work toward getting production-quality wireframes to engineering.

Nice post. Keep ‘em coming.