Glossary
Entry and Exit Criteria
Entry criteria are the conditions that must be true before testing can start (a stable build, a test environment ready). Exit criteria are the conditions that must be true before testing is considered done.
These define the boundaries of a testing phase so nobody is guessing whether it's ready to start or safe to stop.
Entry criteria — what has to be true before testing begins. Typically: the build is deployed to a test environment, it's stable enough to test (no immediate crashes), test data is available, and any dependent features are complete.
Exit criteria — what has to be true before testing is considered finished for that phase. Typically: all planned test cases have run, no open defects above an agreed severity, and coverage of critical flows meets an agreed bar.
Why this matters
Without entry criteria, testing starts against a broken build and wastes cycles reporting things that were already known issues. Without exit criteria, "are we done testing" becomes a subjective argument instead of a checklist.
In practice
A simple, common exit-criteria set: zero open defects with high severity, every critical user journey passing, and a clean autonomous run against the release candidate. See release testing & pre-release QA for how this fits into a release process end to end.
See also
See how this plays out in practice — start a free run or read the autonomous testing guide.