Project management is the crucial aspect that decides the success or failure of project delivery. It is an elaborate process that a project manager chooses to ensure everything from start to end during the project completion phase happens smoothly. Whether the team gets assigned to develop software or a website, the process has to get completed in phases. It begins with requirement gathering, prototype designing, development, quality check, and final product delivery. Now, different stages get handled by different teams, working in coordination with each other.
A project manager must ensure every team works to the best of their ability and the project gets delivered on time. Additionally, they set acceptance criteria for the team, telling them the standards they need to meet to get their project through to the completion phase. We will discuss a few acceptance criteria examples here to give you an idea of how this entire process works.
What are Project Management Acceptance Criteria?
Before you move forward to know the acceptance criterion for any project, it is vital to understand the term better. Multiple teams are working on different aspects of a project. Some have to do the design part, some does development, while other are in the quality assurance phase. Moreover, even the server teams are a part of project completion, as any flaw at their end can delay the process significantly. Hence, it is vital to have set norms that each team should follow to avoid conflicts and ensure timely delivery of projects.
These norms set by the concerned team or person are called the project acceptance criteria or project management acceptance criteria. It has all the details about targets that every team has to meet in a given time and under what circumstances the client will accept the project. If you have seen the user stories examples with acceptance criteria, you would have noticed that these are nothing but targets to achieve before the final project handover.
Why Do Projects Need Acceptance Criteria?
When multiple teams work on one project, plenty of issues can arise. For example, there can be conflicts where the work that a team does is not complying with the requirements of the other. Moreover, when no one has an idea about the direction in which they have to run the project, it will get challenging to get the outcome. Thus, it is significant that there is a pre-decided acceptance criterion in project management that every team working on the same project needs to follow as a reference. It will make things easier and smoother and multiply the chances of timely delivery.
Types of Acceptance Criteria
Now, the acceptance criteria need to be in some format. First, people take specialized Project Management training courses to get skilled in writing the acceptance criteria. Then, they try to focus either on the features to deliver or scenarios under which the project will get considered completed. There are three types of acceptance criteria examples in project management.
- Scenario Oriented
- Rule Oriented
- Custom Formats
Anyone involved in a project actively or indirectly will get the criteria to sheet in any of these types. They should follow it religiously to yield better results and deliver the project on time, meeting every requirement of their client.
Key Functions of Acceptance Criteria
The ultimate use of project management acceptance criteria is to ensure the timely delivery of projects in the desired form. However, there are many other purposes that a project manager aims to achieve through it. Some of these functions are as listed below.
1. Detailed Information
It provides detailed information about what to do and the right way to do it to everyone working in the team.
2. Streamlining Tasks
It helps assign the tasks, creating a flow of what happens after each step until the project completion.
3. Better Communication
It makes communication smooth and seamless for the teams, avoiding unnecessary conflicts.
4. Task Evaluations
It helps evaluate the project completion and its quality at the end before the final handover.
These criteria sheets can help manage the entire project seamlessly, avoiding potential conflicts and unnecessary delays. The only thing that an expert has to ensure is to design the document well after referring to the verified acceptance criteria examples for user stories.
Importance of Project Management Acceptance Criteria
If designed and implemented well, the acceptance criteria become the backbone of any project. It gives every team the direction to work, and they can achieve the delivery targets conveniently by following it religiously. Moreover, once the acceptance criteria get set, there will not be any confusion amongst the teams as there will be better clarity of job roles and the delivery standards, they all need to meet.
Hence, it is fair to say that timely project delivery according to the requirements is possible when you have a well-structured project management acceptance criteria sheet for reference. That is the reason project managers join the best PMP course to learn to write the acceptance criteria.
The Benefits of a Well-Defined Set of Acceptance Criteria in Your Projects
There is a plethora of perks that you can enjoy in the entire product development and design phase by simply following the acceptance criteria. Some of the benefits are:
- You can avoid the conflicts that often arise in teams that work together on the same project. The conflicts are usually related to the job roles, so when they have set criteria, they will know who does what and how!
- You can keep your team informed about the things or the standards they need to meet to ensure successful project delivery. In addition, any changes in the project during the design or development phase can get notified through the acceptance criteria.
- It helps remove ambiguity related to the requirements and considerably reduces the chances of bugs or mismanagement in the project.
There are plenty of other perks that acceptance criteria offer. However, it needs to be well-designed to get the expected results.
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How to Write Acceptance Criteria?
There are various benefits of acceptance criteria, but they will only work for you if you design or elaborate them well. Therefore, it is better to refer to multiple acceptance criteria project management examples to understand how to do it well. The simple steps you need to follow to write this document are:
- Use active voice to write this criterion, keeping the subject as the task performer. This way, you can clearly address the person who owns the primary responsibility of doing a task.
- Avoid using pronouns as it can create confusion. Use more nouns to avoid ambiguity related to who is who!
- Do not complicate the sentences by using conjunctions, like and, but, as well as, and more. Clear and short sentences are easy to understand, and the teams do not have to make any extra effort to understand the document.
- Try and write the entire document in affirmation. Never use the negation in sentences, as it can hinder the clarity.
Significant Challenges and Mistakes in Writing Acceptance Criteria
It is not that easy to write the acceptance criteria. You may look at countless test acceptance criteria examples and still find it challenging to write your own. Some of the challenges that project managers face are:
- Explaining an elaborate requirement in short and precise sentences. They do not want to complicate things by increasing the requirement paragraphs but do want to give better clarity.
- Explaining technical details to somebody who is not from a technical background. Moreover, when there is a limitation for conjunctions and complex language, it may lead to poor writing.
- Common mistake people often make is not providing enough information, eventually leading to project failure!
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7 Tips on Writing Good Acceptance Criteria
If you work in a project management team and often have to write an excellent acceptance criterion, the tips listed below can help.
- Make sure every user story has its dedicated acceptance criteria. Then, explain it in detail to the concerned team. Use more acceptance terms if required, but do not make it unnecessarily long.
- Write the criteria and circulate them to all the concerned teams before starting any project. There is no point in sharing it after the initial stage is over.
- Do thorough requirement gathering, clearing every confusion you have with the client. Make sure you have enough clarity before sharing the scenario with your team.
- Mention the scenarios under which the acceptance criteria will accept or reject the project unit completed by a team.
- It should always direct the team towards the end result of a project.
- Make sure you keep the sentences short, crisp and understandable. Moreover, you should avoid using language that everyone cannot understand.
- Ensure the acceptance criteria get approved ad verified by the product owner or the client.
Examples of Acceptance Criteria
There are countless options in acceptance criteria for project deliverables example. Using them, you can write your acceptance criteria PMP and expect a smoother development. Let us share an example of acceptance criteria in project management for better understanding.
User Story: I am a teacher. I want to create a student attendance report so that I can check their presence in the school.
Acceptance Criteria:
- Show the total number of students in a class
- Put their names in alphabetical order
- Provide a column to write the date and day
- Give filter to display a list of absent students
It should be the simplified acceptance criteria that the team working on the project can follow. Writing anything more than this would only create confusion.
Checklist: Components of Acceptance Criteria
There are three main components of acceptance criteria that make it agile and highly deliverable. It includes:
- User Story
- Event
- its outcome
In the first step, you will mention the user story, followed by the things team needs to do. Finally, in the end, there will be the result of the actions performed in the second step. If you check the examples of product acceptance criteria in project management, these are the only three components you will find.
Conclusion
It is fair to say that an acceptance criterion is the backbone of successful project delivery. Therefore, any expert in the project management team should complete the best PRINCE2 certification to write excellent acceptance criteria that the team can follow to enjoy project success. Moreover, it is equally significant to follow and implement it well to experience expected outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What's the difference between the Definition of Done and Acceptance Criteria?
The definition of done is about the quality standards you need to cater to while completing the project. However, acceptance criteria are about the process to follow to move towards the completeness of the project. You can refer to project acceptance criteria examples for better clarity.
2. What are examples of why projects need acceptance criteria?
Projects need acceptance criteria to ensure timely deliveries and to meet all the requirements set by the client or the product owner. Moreover, it can effectively avoid the inter-team conflicts that often happen during the development and design phase.
