I write many user stories as part of my work and my entrepreneurial project. For each of them, I list all the acceptance criteria that will allow us to determine if the features have been successfully implemented. ☑️
To reduce the carbon footprint of the products that are developed, I have started to integrate more and more eco-responsible acceptance criteria. 🍃
These acceptance criteria stand out from the others because they focus on the environment. Specifically, they are intended to reduce the data needed to operate the website (or web application).
By minimizing this data, all the infrastructures on which they transact use less memory and electricity. ⚡
Did I pique your curiosity? 😜
Examples of sustainable acceptance criteria
If you are wondering what these famous criteria might look like, here are some real examples that I regularly put in my user stories:
- Only the data necessary for the application operation are transmitted between the different computer systems. 🖥
- Data is cached for as long as possible. 🙈
- All caches are invalidated at the appropriate time, such as when updating data or computer systems.
- SVG vector images are optimized with SVGOMG so there is no perceptible difference to the naked eye. 👁️
- Images are available in more compressed formats than traditional ones, such as WebP and AVIF. 🖼
- Resources are compressed in gzip and Brotli formats. 🗜️
- JavaScript, HTML and CSS files are minified and uglified.
Of course, these acceptance criteria are not always applicable to all user stories. Some of them are mainly intended for the design of the product itself. 😉
Conclusion
Now that you know that it is possible to write eco-responsible acceptance criteria, do you plan to add them to your next user stories? 🤗
