Purpose:

Acceptance criteria are used to define the requirements, outcomes, or conditions that must be met in order for a solution to be considered acceptable to key stakeholders. Evaluation criteria are the measures used to access a set of requirements in order to choose between multiple solutions.

Business Analysis Body of Knowledge^® (BABOK^®)

The term acceptance and evaluation criteria are defined early in the project cycle and must be met in order that a solution is complete, correct, and worth implementing. Many test cases are written that can verify the solution given and agreed upon the acceptance criteria. In order to evaluate potential solutions, the set of requirements is prioritized and ranked by the order of importance. The solutions will then be scored against the ranked set of requirements using the pre-established evaluation scale. The main element of acceptance and evaluation criteria technique is test-ability and ranking. Teat-ability is used to check whether the requirements of the solution have been met and ranking determines the importance of order and how well the resulting solutions meets those requirements. This techniques focuses on the acceptability of the solution to its key stakeholders.  

The acceptance and evaluation criteria define the measures of value attributes to be used for accessing, comparing solutions and alternative designs. This technique can apply at all levels of a project, from a high level to a more detailed level. Acceptance criteria are typically used when only one possible solution is being evaluated, and generally expressed as pass or fail. Evaluation criteria define a set of measurements which allow for ranking of solutions and alternate designs according to the value of the stakeholders. Each solution represent a continuous or a discrete scale for measuring a specific solution attribute such as costs, performance, usability. Both acceptance and evaluation criteria are defined with the same value attributes. When evaluating various solutions, the solution with lower costs and better performance are rated higher.

Some of the articles related to Acceptance and evaluation criteria techniques are as follows,

• Better criteria for better evaluation - https://www.oecd.org/dac/evaluation/revised-evaluation-criteria-dec-2019.pdf
• Evaluation of risk acceptance criteria - https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/2020-02/Evaluation%20of%20Risk%20Acceptance%20Criteria_r1.pdf
• Standard for evaluation and acceptance criteria - http://user.engineering.uiowa.edu/~becker/documents.dir/SFSA/2008-5.5_RT_Standard.pdf
• Best practices of acceptance criteria - https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/business/acceptance-criteria-purposes-formats-and-best-practices/
• Safety acceptance criteria - http://www.ripid.ethz.ch/Paper/Diamantidis_paper.pdf
• Acceptance criteria for durability tests - https://www.nrmca.org/research/ci2905obla.pdf
• User story for acceptance and evaluation criteria - https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/user-story-acceptance-criteria/
• Guideline for acceptance and evaluation technique - https://hal-india.co.in/Common/Uploads/DMS/CVC_Guidelines_Booklet.pdf
• Evaluation criteria handbook - http://www.oas.org/juridico/PDFs/mesicic4_guy_ev09.pdf
• Requirements for acceptance and evaluation criteria - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312188497_Requirements_and_evaluation_criteria_for_acceptance_in_automatic_fire_sprinklers_systems
• Systems and device for acceptance criteria - https://helicalpileworld.com/ac358.pdf
• Acceptance Testing - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710021557.pdf
• A technique for evaluation - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7b03/e5681a78b8303512f582cf74c8dfb786ed46.pdf
• Procedure for acceptance and evaluation technique - https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2018/01/12/procedure-for-supplier-evaluation-20180101.pdf
• Standard for evaluation - http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/applications/preschoolapp/EvaluationCriteria.pdf
• Performance evaluation methods - https://ijcit.com/archives/volume3/issue5/Paper030516.pdf

The two main elements of the acceptance and evaluation criteria technique are value attributes and assessment. The value attributes are the characteristics of a solution that substantially influence its value for the stakeholders. It determine the quality of the solution such as the ability to provide a specific information, performance and responsiveness characteristics, usability, security, and reliability. In order to access the solution, we have to write the test cases for the problem and check the test-ability of the particular solution chosen.

A case study is a research method that involve a detailed examination of a particular case. It involves both the qualitative and quantitative research methods. The acceptance and evaluation criteria technique has many case studies which concentrate on the 5 major areas that will find a particular solution which meet the requirements. The major areas are,

• Used Needs- Identifying all the user data and their various needs that is important for the successful development and implementation of the solution. It also refers to the requirements for manipulating, analyzing, and processing.
• Study Design- There are many study design principles such as statistical and conceptual designs. We can fetch the data and the information quickly from the table for evaluation.
• Data characteristics and quality - The Characteristics and quality checking is important since errors can occur not only at the time of collection and initial processing, bu also at any time the data are accessed. To overcome this, we are using the quality checking.
• Data Management- It refers to the handling of data at each step of data path, from initial study design, through data collection, accessing and analyses, final reporting, and archiving.
• Issues- On finding the solution to a particular problem, many issues arise. We have to consider all the issues and find a solution that meet the requirements of the problem.