INVEST Criteria

Six properties of a well-formed user story: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable.

Syntax

design-and-specify

I — Independent (self-contained, no ordering dependency)
N — Negotiable (details open to discussion)
V — Valuable (delivers user or business value)
E — Estimable (team can estimate effort)
S — Small (fits in one sprint)
T — Testable (has clear pass/fail acceptance criteria)

Example

design-and-specify

// BAD: violates multiple INVEST criteria
"Build the entire user management system"
// Not small, not independent, not estimable

// GOOD: passes all INVEST criteria
"As an admin, I want to deactivate a user account
so that I can revoke access for former employees.
Given I am on the Users page, when I click Deactivate
on a user, then their status changes to Inactive and
they cannot log in."