Specs and Reviews

Version 0.5.0 · 8 pages · PDF · Word

How does work get from an idea to done?

When several people share the work on one thing, they need to agree on what they’re making, who is doing which part and when each part is finished. If your experience of a team is one person doing most of the heavy lifting, you may not have needed much of this. Once the work is shared, a spec, work items, a tracker, acceptance criteria and reviews keep everyone on the same page.

You define the result in a spec, split it into work items, and keep them in a tracker. Before work starts, you agree on acceptance criteria, so the person doing it and the reviewer use the same test.

Term	Meaning
Spec	What you want built and why.
Work item	One piece of work one person can finish.
Tracker	The shared list of work, owners and statuses.
Acceptance criteria	Conditions the finished work must meet.
Review	Someone else checks, then approves or requests changes.

How do the parts fit together?

Every step updates the tracker, so anyone can see who has each item and where it stands. Requested changes send the item back to in progress.

Tip

When review keeps sending work back, check the acceptance criteria and the spec before the work itself. One of them may be unclear.

01 Spec

Field	Text
Identify by	Requirements, a design or a brief in a shared document.
What	A spec says what you want built and why. The spec also says what the work covers and leaves out.
So what	A shared spec keeps everyone working toward the same result. The people asking and those doing the work agree before it is split up.

Field marks

Field	Short answer
Owned by	The person asking for the work
Kept in	A shared document
Cannot	Cover what nobody wrote down

Confused with: Work item

A spec describes the whole result and why it’s wanted. A work item is one piece of that work, sized for one person.

02 Work item

Field	Text
Identify by	A task, ticket, issue or story in a tracker.
What	A work item is one piece of a larger job, small enough for one person to finish in days. The item links to the spec and holds its acceptance criteria.
So what	Small work items show progress and problems early. Problems get fixed while they’re still small.

Field marks

Field	Short answer
Owned by	One person
Kept in	The tracker
Cannot	Replace a missing spec

Confused with: Milestone

A milestone is a date or release for finishing several items, not work itself.

03 Tracker

Field	Text
Identify by	A shared tool such as GitHub Issues, Jira or a spreadsheet.
What	A tracker is the shared list of work items. Each item has an owner and a status.
So what	A current tracker makes progress visible. Anyone can see who has what, what is stuck and what is done.

Field marks

Field	Short answer
Owned by	Everyone using it
Kept in	One shared tool
Cannot	Judge the result

Confused with: Backlog

A backlog holds unstarted work. A tracker also holds work in progress, review or done.

04 Acceptance criteria

Field	Text
Identify by	Short statements in the work item, each one true or false.
What	Acceptance criteria state what must be true for a work item to be accepted. For example, a user can reset a password from the sign-in page.
So what	Agreed criteria give the person doing the work and the reviewer the same test. Set them before work starts.

Field marks

Field	Short answer
Owned by	The person asking for the work
Kept in	The work item
Cannot	Catch an unwritten case

Confused with: Definition of done

Acceptance criteria apply to one item. A definition of done is a checklist for every item.

05 Review

Field	Text
Identify by	A code review, design review or sign-off in the work item.
What	A review checks work against its acceptance criteria. The reviewer, who didn’t do the work, approves it or asks for specific changes.
So what	A second person catches a missed condition or mistake. Mistakes are hard to see in your own work.

Field marks

Field	Short answer
Owned by	The reviewer
Kept in	The work item
Cannot	Find every problem

Confused with: Approval

A review is the check, and approval is the decision it can end in. If someone approves work without checking it, there was no review.

One work item, start to finish

The work item keeps its owner, status, criteria and review together in the tracker.

Approval closes the item. A request for changes sends it back to in progress with the reviewer’s comments, then back to review.

Easy to mix up

Question	Answer
Spec or acceptance criteria?	The spec covers the whole result. Acceptance criteria say what one finished item must meet.
Review or testing?	Testing checks behavior. Review lets another person judge the result and the evidence.
Done or released?	Done means the item was accepted. Released means its result has reached its users.

Sources

These public sources were checked in October 2026.

Source	Date	Address
Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, The Scrum Guide	November 2020	scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html
Agile Alliance, Agile Glossary	October 2026	agilealliance.org/agile101/agile-glossary/
GitHub Docs, Issues	October 2026	docs.github.com/en/issues
Google, Engineering Practices: Code Review	October 2026	google.github.io/eng-practices/review/