A Description of Successful Completion of the Task

How will you measure success? It is amazing how much disagreement there will be over this question and how often developers have differing opinions on what represents successful completion of a task. When you include successful completion criteria (SCC) with the task description, you add precision to what you are measuring and how you view the task. SCC define the boundaries of your task and help to clarify test scoring. When you have difficulty ascertaining the SCC, it reflects the development team's confusion about the product design. Establishing and documenting the SCC is a good exercise just for that reason alone.

Criteria for successful completion can include reaching a certain point in the task or screen flow, a maximum number of errors or wrong turns (for information-finding tasks), and whether you will consider the task "complete" if the participant reaches the appropriate end point but makes mistakes alone the way.