Artifact: Product Acceptance Plan

This artifact 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, and assigned responsibilities and required resources. On a smaller scale project, this plan may be embedded within the Software Development Plan.

Work Product Kinds: Plan

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

Main Description	The Product Acceptance Plan details customer acceptance criteria, and identifies the product acceptance tasks (including identification of the test cases that need to be developed) that will be carried out, and assigned responsibilities and required resources. On a smaller scale project, this plan may be embedded within the Software Development Plan.

Representation Options	The contract may be explicit about how the 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 (meantime between failure, for example). In that case, there is no acceptance separate from test and usage, so you can dispense with this plan.