Acceptance Standard Definition

acceptance-standard-definition

Registry Trigger

Use when

• define measurable acceptance criteria evidence and verification standard

Do not use when

• no task-local acceptance standard definition decision is required

Skill Role

Convert desired behavior into objective done standards proven by tests, review evidence, observability, or accountable stakeholder acceptance. Reject criteria that cannot be falsified.

High-Value Rules

• Reject vague criteria unless translated into observable outcomes, rejection conditions, and an evidence type.
• For broad work, bound acceptance to the selected deliverable slice and identify deferred acceptance unless an accountable owner approves broader scope.
• When the user specifies a proof gate or order, preserve that mapping and sequence in the acceptance standard.
• Define condition, action, expected result, evidence, and the decision owner when objective proof cannot settle a material product judgment.
• Select negative, denied, error, regression, and recovery criteria in proportion to the affected risk.
• Mark an acceptance criterion ready only from current proof tied to the affected behavior; identify stale, missing, or inaccessible evidence as an acceptance gap.
• Keep implementation correctness and release readiness unaccepted until quality-test-gate or the applicable specialist gate judges current proof.
• Trace non-functional claims and criteria to their source, measured objective, control, or applicable standard rather than a qualitative adjective.

Anti-Patterns

• Accept qualitative criteria or metrics without an owner, unit, population, measurement point, observation window, operating condition, or cited objective or policy.
• Apply criteria outside the explicit task scenario or leave scope-changing conditions unresolved.
• Specify success alone without a rejection condition that blocks acceptance or records owned residual risk.
• Rely on evidence a reviewer cannot reproduce from task-accessible sources.
• Omit denied authority, expired state, tenant isolation, invalid input, partial failure, or recovery criteria when the affected boundary and risk trigger them.

Stop Conditions

Escalate when acceptance depends on unresolved performance or availability metrics, regulated claims, ownerless security controls, customer-contractual SLAs, or external partner contracts. Also escalate for unrehearsable production-like data migration, irreversible side effects, or subjective judgment without an accountable approver. Escalate scope conflicts to the product owner, cross-system criteria to architecture, regulated controls to the security or privacy gate, and reliability thresholds to SRE.

Output Contract

• acceptance-standard decision with per-criterion condition/action/result, rejection or pass-fail condition, evidence/validator mapping and freshness, missing/stale disposition, decision owner, proof limits, residual-risk owner, and material release consequence
• boundary statement that criterion readiness does not establish implementation correctness or release readiness; current proof judgment remains with quality-test-gate or the applicable specialist gate

Targeted References