What are Exit Criteria?

The testing strategy or high-level test plan document is quite often used as the exit criteria. The exit criteria would also include other details such as how well that tests needs to have been done. For example it may state that you need to have tested everything and have found no serious errors but minor errors are acceptable.

Testing is an iterative process and as it is impossible to test everything we could just keep going round the loop indefinitely.

If the exit criteria has been stated in advance then testing can stop when the exit criteria has been met. In other words we can thus say that the exit criteria are the criteria to be met in other to stop testing.

The exit criteria will therefore depend on the following: -

· The risk to the business process of the project.

· The time constraints within the project.

· The resource constraints within the project.

· The budget of the project.