Agile Planning: Acceptance Criteria and Key Testing Tasks

When clients move from Waterfall to Agile, one of the first questions we hear is: What do testers do in Agile? The honest answer is that it depends — on the Agile framework you adopt, the maturity of your process, and the skills of your team.

Regardless of those variables, testing must be part of Agile planning from the very beginning. Two areas are especially critical: having clear acceptance criteria in user stories and defining the key testing tasks that will take place within the Agile process.

Agile Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance criteria are central to planning. They give teams the clarity they need to size tickets accurately, understand the scope of work, and set expectations between product owners, developers, and testers.

Every ticket should include acceptance criteria from both a business and a technical perspective. On the technical side, teams can set baseline expectations for elements like unit test coverage, instrumentation, logging, and performance. These criteria help determine when a story can be considered complete — from both development and testing standpoints.

For us, acceptance criteria act as a checklist for “done”: unit tests in place, code reviewed, fully tested, deployed, and ready for release. This definition of done applies consistently across all user stories. Grooming sessions should address both development and testing requirements, ensuring that each ticket delivers clear business value and meets quality standards.

Without defined acceptance criteria, teams risk starting work without a solid foundation. That can delay progress, introduce rework, and put delivery schedules at risk. Acceptance criteria should be present from the first planning session through the end of testing, ensuring everyone knows exactly what “done” means.

Agile Testing Tasks

In Agile, each sprint has a set velocity — the amount of work or value delivered in that iteration. Estimating work is part of sprint planning, but it is easy for teams to focus only on development and forget to include testing tasks in their estimates. When that happens, essential QA work may be rushed, delayed, or skipped entirely, leading to unfinished stories at sprint’s end.

Testing must be treated as a first-class activity within every user story. Common testing tasks that should be included from the start include:

Infrastructure and Environment Management

Tools, frameworks, and test environments must be set up and maintained to avoid incompatibilities and out-of-sync environments. This is especially important for distributed teams where environment inconsistencies can derail progress.

Test Data Management

Generating, maintaining, and validating test data is essential. Consistent, reliable data ensures that test results are trustworthy and reproducible.

Non-Functional Testing

Activities like static analysis, complexity analysis, performance testing, and security testing should be performed during development, not left until the end. Addressing these areas early prevents costly last-minute fixes.

Cross-Functional and Integration Testing

New features should be tested not only in isolation but also in relation to existing functionality. This ensures that the end user experience is intact and that changes have not introduced regressions.

Acceptance Test Activities

These include prioritising tests, covering normal, alternate, and error paths, and reviewing stories to remove ambiguity. Story reviews help clarify user roles, expected behaviour, and acceptable variations.

Documentation

Documentation in Agile should be purposeful — only what you want to remember. While lengthy test plans may be unnecessary, certain test details, procedures, or configurations should be captured so they can be reused or understood by others.

Quality is a Shared Responsibility

Agile removes the idea of a single “gatekeeper” for quality. Instead, everyone on the team is responsible for ensuring that the product meets its standards. By embedding acceptance criteria into every story and explicitly planning for testing tasks, teams can deliver working software each sprint that is both functional and reliable.