Acceptance and Evaluation Criteria - External

The Acceptance and Evaluation Criteria - External pattern creates a Requirement and a User Story that both contain External Acceptance Criteria that have been created using an Acceptance Criteria element.  The advantage of the external Acceptance or Evaluation criteria is that they are owned by the element and can be displayed in a compartment on diagrams. They can also be moved externally if required.

Figure 1. Shows a Requirement diagram with a Functional Requirement that has three Acceptance Criteria added as Internal Requirements.

Figure 1. Shows a Requirement diagram with a User Story that has three Acceptance Criteria added as External Requirements.
Discussion
The purpose of the pattern is to allow Requirement Analysts, Business Analysts and other Stakeholders to create and view a Requirement and a User Story that have Acceptance Criteria defined. Acceptance criteria describe the minimum acceptable set of requirements that must be complied with in order for a particular solution to be a suitable candidate for implementation.

The pattern is typically used in the early stages of the development of a solution and is used to define the requirements, outcomes, or conditions that must be complied with in order to ensure that a solution is acceptable to key solution stakeholders.

The following is a list of some things you may want to do when working with this pattern.
·	Rename the diagram.
Rename the Requirements to suit the initiative.
Rename the Acceptance Criteria to suit the initiative.
Add detailed notes that describe the Acceptance Criteria or the owning Requirement.
Update the properties of the Requirements to suit the initiative.

The following is a list of some of the next steps available when applying the pattern.
·	Move the Acceptance Criteria external if you need to create connections to other model elements.
Define Trace relationships showing how the Requirements relate to up-process elements such as Strategies, Business Rules and other Requirements and down-process elements such as User Stories, Use Cases, Components, Artifacts and database tables.
Create high quality documentation generated automatically from the model.

Useful Workspace Layouts Core | Core Modeling
Reference
The following help topics will assist you learn about how to work with this pattern.
Requirements Diagram
Requirements Diagrams Examples
Requirements Overview
Working In Diagrams
What are Requirements
Meet the Requirement Tools

The following are some of the tools that will be helpful when working with this pattern.
Specification View
The Specification View can be used as a way of working with the Components and Interfaces particularly when there are a large number of elements as is typically the case when describing a system of any appreciable size. For more details see the Specification View help topic.
Relationship Matrix
The Relationship Matrix provides a spreadsheet like view of two groups of elements and the relationships that exist between them. It can be a used as a powerful analysis mechanism to visually indicate how elements are related to each other and to discover which elements are missing relationships. For more details see the Relationship Matrix  help topic.
Traceability Window
The Traceability Window automatically displays the relationships that exist between Use Cases and other model elements including up-process and down-process elements. The traceability tree view can be conveniently expanded to see deeper relationships and elements displayed in the window can be located in all diagrams in which they appear. For more details see the Traceability Window  help topic.
Element Discussions
The Element Discussion facility is a fully featured collaboration tool allowing modelers and model viewers and reviewers to communicate with each other directly inside the repository. Modelers using the full client or occasional viewers using WebEA can both post and reply to discussions and communicate and engage in chat. For more details see the Element Discussions help topic.
Diagram Layout
The Diagram Layout tool allows you to layout an entire diagram, selected elements or sections of a diagram to make it more visually appealing or meaningful to a particular audience. There are a wide range of layout types to choose from and some types have filters that can be applied. For more details see the Diagram Layout help topic.
Pan and Zoom
The Pan and Zoom facility is one of the tools that can be used to navigate around a large diagram. Often the resolution of a diagram must be reduced to ensure it is wholly visible but by using the Pan and Zoom window you can leave the diagram at a readable resolution and pan around to areas of interest zooming in when necessary. For more details see the Pan and Zoom help topic.
Diagram Legends
The Diagram Legend facility is useful for manually or automatically changing the appearance of elements and connectors on a diagram. A legend can be added from the Common Toolbox and configured to codify the fill and line color and line thickness. This is a powerful way to add meaning and expression to a diagram and is particularly expressive when applied automatically based on element or connector properties. It can be used with a number of specialized diagrams such as roadmaps to create a powerful visualization.  For more details see the Diagram Legends help topic.
Document Generator
The Document Generator is a powerful facility in Enterprise Architect that allows a Database Engineer or other stakeholder to create high quality corporate or technical documentation directly from the model, suitable for internal or external audiences. For more details see the Documentation help topic or the more general topic on Model Publishing.

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