Agile – the difference between requirements and acceptance criteria

acceptance-testingagileRequirements

I am trying to understand the difference a little better as it seem like they are the same thing.

I have work in projects with no use of the requirements and everything is an acceptance criteria, and on projects that have both.

Best Answer

The acceptance criteria defines when the application is finished. Or to put it another way, when you can ship it. It includes list of requirements that it has to fulfill. This means that some requirements (usually "nice to have" requirements) may fall off, and be implemented in next version.

To expand it even further (taken from here) :

Microsoft Press defines Acceptance Criteria as “Conditions that a software product must satisfy to be accepted by a user, customer or other stakeholder.” Google defines them as “Pre-established standards or requirements a product or project must meet.”

and

Acceptance Criteria are a set of statements, each with a clear pass/fail result, that specify both functional (e.g., minimal marketable functionality) and non-functional (e.g., minimal quality) requirements applicable at the current stage of project integration. These requirements represent “conditions of satisfaction.” There is no partial acceptance: either a criterion is met or it is not.

A requirement describes a certain functionality of the application.

Or, as wiki nicely stated :

a requirement is a singular documented physical and functional need that a particular design, product or process must be able to perform.

What is the difference between the acceptance criteria and the application requirements?

With above definitions, the difference is quite clear.

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