Business application acceptance criteria should answer one question before delivery begins: can an authorised person, using agreed inputs and evidence, confirm that a business flow completed correctly or record an exception? A useful criterion is not a screen description or a broad wish. It is a testable scenario with an input owner, business decision, expected outcome, exception and acceptance measure.
A business request often begins with a short statement: "automate approvals", "connect warehouse and sales", or "introduce AI assistance for document processing". This states a direction, but it does not define what delivery must achieve in day-to-day work.
Without acceptance criteria, participants can interpret the same request differently. A user may expect a completed order, finance may expect correct posting, and a technical team may expect successful data transfer. All three checks can matter, but they are not the same business decision.
Business application acceptance criteria separate these questions before implementation. They help establish:
ORKA starts with the business process and accountability, not only with individual interface functions. Business process screening can help separate process decisions, data and handoff points before implementation scope is defined.
The most useful acceptance criterion describes one concrete business flow. Record six elements for every flow.
State the event that begins the action and the point where the process ends. Avoid vague starts such as "when data arrives". A more precise start is: a sales order is received with a customer identifier and line items.
The process boundary also needs to be clear. Completion is not necessarily a message on a screen. It can be a recorded order, an approval by the responsible role, an open task for exception handling, or an entry in an official ERP transaction.
Name an owner for every required input. The owner is not necessarily the person who transfers the data technically. The owner is the role accountable for the accuracy, completeness or business validity of that data.
Examples of inputs worth separating include:
When no owner is named, technical delivery may transfer data, but it cannot resolve a business dispute about whether that data is valid.
A criterion should name the decision, not only the activity. An example decision is: may an order be released to production when an item has no confirmed delivery date?
Name the decision owner alongside the decision. This may be a sales manager, production planner, finance team or another named business role. A system may apply a pre-approved rule, but accountability for the business rule and its change needs to remain visible.
ORKA defines the business decision and handover approach with accountable roles. For specialised engineering delivery, such as a more complex integration or tailored component development, see Trueforce: engineering delivery .
The expected outcome must be visible in the working system. State where the official record is created and which role can verify it.
A well-formed outcome could read: after availability is confirmed, the system records a production order with a status that permits planning, and the planner can access the order identifier.
This description does not prescribe a technical solution in advance. It specifies the business result and the record needed for work. In ERP processes, an official transaction, document or status often carries more weight than a notification or temporary display in an auxiliary application.
An exception is not a marginal note. It shows how the process works when real data does not follow the ideal path.
For every material exception, state:
For example, when a document lacks data required for posting, the system does not create an official posting. Finance receives a task to complete or reject the item, and the reason remains associated with the document. The acceptance measure is not speed without review. It is the ability to show that no incomplete posting became an official record through that scenario.
Evidence of a completed business flow needs to be available to the person taking over the solution. Evidence may include a document identifier, status, decision record, link between input and output documents, recorded exception task or an audit trail already provided by the system.
Phrase the acceptance measure as a check without inventing baseline or target values. Examples include:
The following scenario is hypothetical. It does not describe an ORKA customer or a delivered capability of a particular product.
Business request: a sales order containing a manufactured item should trigger a check before production planning.
A testable scenario could include the following:
This form avoids an unclear criterion such as "the integration works". An integration may transfer a message successfully while the business flow remains incomplete, misdirected or without an accountable decision.
When an application uses AI to classify, summarise, extract data or suggest an action, an acceptance criterion must distinguish a suggestion from a business decision. It needs to state who reviews the suggestion, when human confirmation is required, what the system does when the result is unclear, and what record remains after acceptance or rejection.
The DORA research on AI-assisted software development examines AI in the context of organisation and delivery. This source does not constitute a performance promise for an individual ORKA project or client. Each specific process requires separate review of input quality, permissions, human review, exception handling and decision evidence.
For AI-supported work, it is useful to frame acceptance through process behaviour, for example:
Criteria that are too broad leave room for conflicting interpretations. Criteria that are too detailed can lock delivery too early and move technical decisions into the business request. Balance comes from specifying the business result, accountability and evidence precisely while leaving room for the technical team to deliver within agreed boundaries.
Not every possible edge case needs treatment before work begins. The priority is exceptions with greater business impact, more frequent occurrence or a clear decision owner. Remaining unknowns should be recorded openly as assumptions or questions for review, rather than presented as agreed facts.
Confirm the following for every business flow:
If a request cannot yet pass through this checklist, clarifying the process is more useful than beginning delivery from a broad functional statement. To structure that decision and handover, talk to the ORKA team .