Introduce or enhance product acceptance and success criteria

Owned by Katsiaryna_Subach
Last updated: Jan 17, 2022 by Aleksandr Bogush
2 min read

  1. Identify and define DoD for a User Story:

    • The user story implementation meets ALL the acceptance criteria

    • The Product Owner approved the user story

    • The user story is deployed in a proper environment

    • The unit tests were written, executed and passed

    • Every acceptance criteria have at least a test case associated

    • The team wrote, completed unit tests and they passed

    • The Technical Documentation is uploaded by the team on Confluence

    • The performance is under X

    • There is no regression in the automation testing suite

    • The user story has been peer-reviewed

    • Integration testing performed and compiles

    • The manual configurations that need to be performed are marked in the user story

    • End-user documentation is available

    • The user interface is according to the design

    • The code refactoring is completed

    • Marketing communication of the changes are documented

  2. Introduce UAT process based on product increment DoD, SDLC framework and project success criteria

  3. Clearly define and communicate an acceptance testing phase relying on statement depicted in SOW as well:

    • acceptance terms

    • acceptance timelines

    • deliverables

    • basis to start an acceptance 

    • acceptance procedure

    • actions in case of rejection 

    • who will approve pass of acceptance 

    • etc

  4. Make sure that Success Criteria are quantifiable and SMART

  5. Prepare Happy Path documentation for User Acceptance testing, make sure that proper support for UAT process is provided from the development team's side

  6. Plan UAT phase based on PO availability

  7. Get acceptance in writing, or agree on acceptance justification artifacts (email, JIRA, other docs/tools)

  8. Request power delegation to any other person like PO proxy (e.g. BA)

Important

The project isn’t done before the customer says so, but it doesn’t mean that customer can keep asking you to do more. During closing, you should use success criteria developed during initiation and planning to design acceptance tests to prove that the project is complete. During initiating and planning you should have documented the project deliverables and define clear and quantifiable success criteria. You should work with customer and other stakeholders to design tests to demonstrate whether the deliverables do what they are supposed to. You also need document procedures for running those tests. And finally, you need to get signatures from customer and stakeholders that the deliverables are completed and successful.

EngX recommendations

  • Review DoD now/at/after kick-off of the project with Client's leadership and EPAMers, make sure all participants know and support DoD, nothing prevents to perform all steps to meet DoD.

  • Include basic DoD as a part of SoW (AM/DM)

  • Measure number of areas covered by DoD as success of leadership team (PM/TLs)

  • Measure number of areas added/modified in DoD in collaboration with Client as success of the project, divided on cost of each story(point) in a time.

  • Measure success of the team as percentage of decreasing cost of quality (what effort spent for the story to support DoD), multiplied on a number of projects/accounts who took your DoD as a baseline


Useful materials

DoD: Do you have documented and followed the Definition of Done (DoD) for user stories?