Acceptance Criteria vs Functional Requirements

Developers should learn and use Acceptance Criteria to reduce ambiguity in requirements, prevent scope creep, and ensure that development efforts align with stakeholder expectations meets developers should learn and use functional requirements to ensure that software is built to meet user expectations and business goals, reducing rework and misalignment. Here's our take.

Acceptance Criteria

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use Acceptance Criteria to reduce ambiguity in requirements, prevent scope creep, and ensure that development efforts align with stakeholder expectations

Pros

• They are essential in agile methodologies like Scrum or Kanban for defining 'done' criteria, facilitating effective sprint planning, and enabling automated testing through tools like Cucumber or SpecFlow
• Related to: user-stories, behavior-driven-development

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Functional Requirements

Developers should learn and use functional requirements to ensure that software is built to meet user expectations and business goals, reducing rework and misalignment

Pros

• They are essential during the requirements analysis and design phases of software development, particularly in projects following methodologies like Waterfall or Agile, where clear specifications help in creating accurate estimates, test cases, and validation criteria
• Related to: non-functional-requirements, requirements-analysis

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Acceptance Criteria is a methodology while Functional Requirements is a concept. We picked Acceptance Criteria based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Acceptance Criteria wins

Based on overall popularity. Acceptance Criteria is more widely used, but Functional Requirements excels in its own space.