Presentation: Consensus based techniques as secret for effective entry & exit criteria

No matter you are working in agile or waterfall projects, entry & exit criteria -and even acceptance criteria- are a crucial part of a test strategy. These criteria define the conditions to be met before we start testing or before deciding to go to the next phase, sprint or going to production.
In an attempt to make them as objective as possible, testers often lose themselves in defining too long lists with entry & exit criteria. And guess what…. despite all the effort, the criteria are often ignored or minimized by stakeholders. This can be explained by so-called syndroms like the Stockholm, London or Devil’s Triangle syndrom and in the end, it causes many frustrations at the tester’s side.
Conclusion is that the missing link is often consensus and when we apply a consensus based approach, we’ll end up with (more) effective criteria. This talk highlights some of those techniques (e.g. Roman voting, 1-2-4-all, speed boat retrospective) which are common practice in agile projects. But if you adapt them slightly to a testing context, you get effective criteria. Illustrated with concrete examples, the audience will get the handles to apply them in their own context.