Product validation, acceptance criteria and refinement

Product validation and acceptance criteria

Verification asks whether the product does what the ticket says. Validation asks whether that is what the user and the business needed. Most of the expensive surprises I see are validation failures that passed every test.

These notes cover the work that happens before a test case is written: acceptance criteria Product can sign, what QA brings to refinement, and how to compare design intent with built behaviour while it is still cheap to change.

2 notes on product validation

P016 Sep 20267 min read
Acceptance criteria Product can actually sign
Vague “done” creates UAT fights. How I write acceptance criteria as observable outcomes, so the people who have to approve them can do it without a translator.
P127 Aug 20267 min read
Figma vs functional: catching design/reality gaps early
Design files are intent. Production is behaviour. How I compare a Figma file with the running product, journey by journey, without turning the review into pixel policing.

2 notes on product validation

Acceptance criteria Product can actually sign

Figma vs functional: catching design/reality gaps early