- splitting out an Acceptance Test card that business customers, business analysts, testers and developers collaborate on
- functional testing of a user story by the software development team during the implementation phase as you go (XP).
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing
- Acceptance Tests/Criterion (in Agile Software Development) are usually created by business customers and expressed in a business domain language. These are high level tests to test the completeness of a user story or stories 'played' during any sprint/iteration. These tests are created ideally through collaboration between business customers, business analysts, testers and developers, however the business customers (product owners) are the primary owners of these tests. As the user stories pass their acceptance criteria, the business owners can be sure of the fact that the developers are progressing in the right direction about how the application was envisaged to work and so it's essential that these tests include both business logic tests as well as UI validation elements (if need be).
Acceptance test cards are ideally created during sprint planning or iteration planning meeting, before development begins so that the developers have a clear idea of what to develop. Sometimes (due to bad planning!) acceptance tests may span multiple stories (that are not implemented in the same sprint) and there are different ways to test them out during actual sprints. One popular technique is to mock external interfaces or data to mimick other stories which might not be played out during an iteration (as those stories may have been relatively lower business priority). A user story is not considered complete until the acceptance tests have passed. - Acceptance testing in Extreme Programming
Acceptance testing is a term used in agile software development methodologies, particularly Extreme Programming, referring to the functional testing of a user story by the software development team during the implementation phase.
The customer specifies scenarios to test when a user story has been correctly implemented. A story can have one or many acceptance tests, whatever it takes to ensure the functionality works. Acceptance tests are black box system tests. Each acceptance test represents some expected result from the system. Customers are responsible for verifying the correctness of the acceptance tests and reviewing test scores to decide which failed tests are of highest priority. Acceptance tests are also used as regression tests prior to a production release. A user story is not considered complete until it has passed its acceptance tests. This means that new acceptance tests must be created for each iteration or the development team will report zero progress.
Using Customer Tests to Drive Development: http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=23
