Entry and exit criteria
Entry criteria are the conditions that have to be true before a test phase or level starts, and exit criteria are the conditions that have to be true before it is declared finished. They turn a phase such as system testing or user acceptance testing from a period on a calendar into a gate with a checkable state on each side, agreed in the test plan before it begins.
The longer version
Entry criteria say what the phase needs in order to be worth running: the build is deployed to the test environment and smoke tested, the test cases are written and reviewed, the test data is loaded, the defects from the previous phase that would block this one are closed. Exit criteria say what finished means for the phase: every planned case has been run, no open defect above an agreed severity remains, the ones that do remain are accepted by a named owner, the results are recorded. Both lists go into the test plan, and a phase is entered and left by checking them rather than by the date arriving.
They are confused with two neighbours. Acceptance criteria belong to a feature or a story and say when that piece of work behaves correctly. Entry and exit criteria belong to a phase and say when the phase may begin and end; the exit criteria of a phase often reference acceptance criteria, as in all criteria for in-scope stories verified, without being them. The definition of done is closer, and in settled usage the two are the same idea at different scales: it is an agile team's standing exit criteria, applied to every increment rather than negotiated per phase, and the definition of ready is its entry-side counterpart.
A phase without entry criteria starts on a build that cannot be tested: the environment is not ready, half the cases are blocked on the first defect, and the team spends the phase waiting. A phase without exit criteria never ends, or ends when the launch date arrives regardless of what was found, which amounts to the same thing. Exit criteria written so they cannot fail are harder to see: all critical defects fixed where nobody has defined critical, or testing complete where complete means the tester stopped. Criteria that cannot be checked are decoration on the plan.
Common questions
What are examples of entry and exit criteria in testing?
Entry: the build is deployed to the test environment, the smoke suite passes, the test cases are reviewed, the test data is loaded, and the blocking defects from the previous phase are closed. Exit: every planned case has been executed, no open defect above the agreed severity remains, the remaining ones have a named owner, and the results are recorded.
What is the difference between exit criteria and acceptance criteria?
Acceptance criteria describe when a single feature or story behaves correctly, and they are written per story. Exit criteria describe when a whole test phase may be declared finished, and they are written per phase in the test plan. A phase's exit criteria often require that the acceptance criteria of every in-scope story have been verified.
Who defines entry and exit criteria?
The test lead drafts them in the test plan, and the people who will be held to them agree: the development lead for the entry side, since a build that fails entry is their problem, and the product owner or business sponsor for the exit side, since accepting the remaining defects is a business decision rather than a testing one.
What happens when exit criteria are not met?
The phase is not finished, and the decision moves from the test lead to the people who agreed the criteria. Either the outstanding defects are fixed and the criteria checked again, or the sponsor formally accepts the remaining ones with a named owner and the criteria are recorded as waived. What is not allowed is the date arriving and the phase ending by default.
How are entry and exit criteria checked?
By walking the list in a short meeting at the phase boundary, with the evidence for each line: the deployment record for the build, the run results for the cases, the defect list filtered by severity for the open-defect line. A criterion with no evidence anybody can point at is rewritten until it has some, since a line that is checked by asking whether everyone feels ready is not a criterion.
Bug reports that arrive ready to triage.
Collect replay, console, network and browser context with the Free plan.