Artifact: Product Acceptance Plan

Product Acceptance Plan	The Product Acceptance Plan describes how the customer will evaluate the deliverable artifacts from a project to determine if they meet a predefined set of acceptance criteria. It details these acceptance criteria, and identifies the product acceptance tasks (including identification of the test cases that need to be developed) that will be carried out, assigned responsibilities and resources required. In a smaller scale project, this plan may be embedded within the Software Development Plan
Role:	Project Manager
Template:	Word Template HTML Template
Purpose Brief Outline Timing Responsibility Tailoring Annotated Outline (hyperlinks into HTML template in a new window)

Input to Activities:

Design Test

Develop Deployment Plan

Define Bill of Materials

Manage Acceptance Test

Compile Software Development Plan

Project Acceptance Review

Output from Activities:

Develop Product Acceptance Plan

Purpose

The purpose of the Product Acceptance Plan is to ensure that an objective and clearly defined procedure and set of criteria will be used to determine whether the artifacts to be delivered to the customer are acceptable.

Brief Outline

1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose

1.2 Scope

1.3 Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations

1.4 References

1.5 Overview

2. Responsibilities

3. Product Acceptance Tasks

3.1 Product Acceptance Criteria

3.2 Physical Configuration Audit

3.3 Functional Configuration Audit

3.4 Schedule

4. Resource Requirements

4.1 Hardware Requirements

4.2 Software Requirements

4.3 Documentation Requirements

4.4 Personnel Requirements

4.5 Test Data Requirements

4.6 Other Requirements

5. Problem Resolution and Corrective Action

6. Product Acceptance Environment

7. Identification of Required Artifact Evaluations

8. Tools, Techniques, and Methodologies

Timing

Developed during inception. Scheduled updates occur based on the results of each Iteration/Phase Acceptance Review.

Responsibility

The Role: Project Manager is responsible for maintaining the Product Acceptance Plan.

Tailoring

The contract may be explicit about how product is to be accepted in which case there may be no need for a separate plan. In projects that do not have a specific customer, the product may be deemed acceptable when it has achieved a certain maturity (mean time between failure, say). In this case there is no acceptance separate from test and usage, so you can dispense with this plan.