The Standards and Studies Behind the Book, With What Each Can and Cannot Show

This page lists what the book leans on and what each source is good for. The full citations are in the book’s Sources Cited. Every source here was read on or before 2026-09-30, and the notes say where only an abstract or a secondary description was available. Check the current edition before you quote a standard.

Standards and definitions#

• ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765, Systems and software engineering: Vocabulary (2010 edition read). Defines acceptance testing, software quality, and quality assurance. Good for exact definitions. Later edition exists.
• ISO/IEC 25010, System and software quality models. Defines quality in use for specific users, goals, and contexts. The 2011 edition text was read in a reproduction. The standard was revised in 2023.
• ISO 9241-11, Usability: definitions and concepts (2018). Usability as effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction for specified users, goals, and context. Read only through secondary descriptions.
• ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-1 (2013). Treats acceptance testing as a test level that should involve end users.
• ISTQB Glossary. Definitions of acceptance testing and user acceptance testing. Read on a mirror. Check the current glossary.

Acceptance in agile and in information systems#

• Agile Alliance, ATDD glossary entry; Dan North, “Introducing BDD” (2006); Martin Fowler on specification by example. Acceptance tests as executable checks of a story.
• Davis (1989), Technology Acceptance Model; Venkatesh and colleagues (2003), unified theory. Acceptance as intention to use, explained by perceived usefulness and ease of use.
• Brown and colleagues (2002), “Do I Really Have To?”; Karahanna and colleagues (1999). Mandated versus voluntary adoption. Abstracts read.

Usability and research method#

• Nielsen Norman Group on why five users, facilitator neutrality, task scenarios, and the false-consensus effect.
• Faulkner (2003) on the spread in what five participants find.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Karl Popper.” Falsifiability in plain terms.
• Strathern (1997) on the measure that becomes a target; Levitt and List (2011) on the Hawthorne effect; Mangel and Samaniego (1984) on Wald and aircraft survivability.

Product and market#

• Andreessen (2007), Vohra (2018), MeasuringU on product-market fit and the 40 percent heuristic.
• Christensen and colleagues (2016), Ulwick (2002) on jobs to be done.
• HubSpot; Forrester (2022) on MQL and SQL, and the case against them.
• Forrester (2024), 6sense (2025) on buying-group size.

AI and software production#

• Peng and colleagues (2023); Cui and colleagues (2025); METR (2025, 2026); DORA (2025). Read the limits in each before you use a number. The book’s first chapter summarizes them.

Ethics, privacy, accessibility#

• 45 CFR 46 (Common Rule); 45 CFR 164.514 (HIPAA de-identification); EDPB Guidelines 05/2020 on consent; WCAG 2.2; W3C WAI on involving users. The book’s chapter on realistic conditions cites the parts it uses. These are not legal advice. Ask counsel and your privacy officer.

Dated material#

Survey figures and studies are dated in the book’s sentences. When one changes, this page will say so, with the date.