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In John Stenbeck’s book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference”, he creates an “agile project management process grid” which describes 87 processes used in agile project management.   These processes are divided into five process groups (Initiate, Plan, Iterate, Control, and Close), which are analogous to the five process groups in traditional project management, and seven knowledge areas which can be mapped, more or less, onto the ten knowledge areas in traditional project management.

The previous posts have covered the “Initiate”, “Plan”, “Iterate”, and “Control” process group of an agile project.   Tomorrow I start on the “Control” process group, but I first want to define what I mean by that term of “process group”.   Why do I use this instead of the word “phase”?    Phase implies a sequence that goes more or less from one set of processes to another.   In reality, after the initiate and plan process groups, an agile project actually shuttles back and forth between the “iterate” and “control” process groups.   However, a project always ends with the “Close” process group.

Today’s post on 1.10 Deliverables Acceptance is the first of 7 processes in the Close process group.

Deliverables Acceptance

This process is the whole summit of the project, where the customer or sponsor formally accepts the deliverables.    Even in agile, with its de-emphasis of formalization, requires that the deliverables be accepted formally by the stakeholders because it is crucial to prevent misunderstandings.

Here are the parts of the process.

1. Stakeholders commit to a formal acceptance
2. Administrative closure:   milestone payments, go/no-go decisions about the next phase
3. Necessary documentation:  end-of-project administrative reports, financial reports, continuous improvement notes
4. Celebration!

Celebration is a way of paying back the hard work of the team members, but it also allows a sense of purpose for team members whose sole purpose in the past few weeks or months has been to get to this point.    Beside project closure therefore, it is there for emotional closure as well.

The next process is 2.14 Product Release under the Value-Driven Delivery knowledge area.

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