QA Acceptance
Write acceptance criteria that a reviewer can run against the running app and decide pass or fail without asking the author. The criteria are the contract — automated tests cover correctness, QA covers feature-level behavior.
When to use
- A feature change is heading to QA and needs a written validation plan.
- A reviewer is asked to verify a PR that touches user-visible behavior.
- An incident postmortem requires a regression check before reopen-prevention.
- A release candidate needs a pre-cut smoke pass.
When not to use
- The change is unit-test-only (utility refactor, internal naming). Acceptance criteria are unnecessary churn.
- You are asked to write tests against API contracts. Use contract testing, not feature QA.
Acceptance criteria format
Each criterion is a single, independently-verifiable statement:
- **Given** <starting state>, **when** <action>, **then** <observable outcome>.
Example:
- **Given** a CSV export with 0 rows, **when** the user clicks Export, **then** the file downloads with only the header row and the UI shows "Exported 0 rows".
Avoid criteria that combine multiple whens or thens. Split them.
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