Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Obtaining Project Acceptance

Project acceptance is the key to closing a project—and keeping it closed. Unless you get formal acceptance from whomever has the final say, someone could come back later claiming that a deliverable is missing or that the results aren’t quite right after all.

The deliverables and success criteria (Project Planning in a Nutshell) you carefully documented in the project plan guided the project team through project execution. They’re even more important at project acceptance because you and the project customer use them to measure success and finally deem the project complete.

Deliverables tend to be tangible. For example, either the fundraiser reached its goal of raising $1,000,000 or it didn’t. But some success criteria can be subjective. The more diligent you are in hashing out clear and quantifiable success criteria during planning, the easier it is to obtain project acceptance at the project’s end.

If success criteria aren’t completely clear, acceptance may take some time. When you finally get there, it’s essential to get the customer to sign an acceptance form. Signing a document makes it harder for the customer to renege. Face-to-face meetings seem to give a sign-off more weight, but a conference call to deliver acceptance verbally (followed up with a signed hard copy) is the next best thing.

The acceptance form can be straightforward: The most important part of the document is the John Hancock from whoever has authority to accept the project. You can ...