Each user story should have at least one acceptance test. The tests are drafted by these business (with support from the BAs and QA) they describe the behavior they expect to in the application when the story is done. The builders work on automating these tests where practical.
As the builders and the business converge and gain clarity on what they’re agreeing to deliver with a story they start to build and automate the acceptance tests. These tests are integrated into the continuous build.
The acceptance tests feed into the “Definition of Done” for each story. A story isn’t ready to be implementated until its acceptance tests are understood, and the story isn’t complete until all of it’s acceptance tests pass.
This simple discipline turns conversations into delivered functionality.
Discussions for your team
- Which business people will author acceptance tests for the next batch of upcoming stories?
- Can we commit to clarifying the acceptance tests before the implementation work is started?
- How will we integrate acceptance tests into CI pipelines?
- Do we have any blockers that prevent the acceptance tests from becoming executable tests?