Verification
The ability of the targeted Delivery Team to meet the Acceptance Criteria will be evaluated at least once every Transformation Heartbeat. Once a criterion has been demonstrably achieved to the satisfaction of the Transformation Rollout Team then the criterion is deemed to have been met, and the change item can be retired.
In the previous example, if the Rollout Team observe that a WIP limit of 3 is being consistently observed, they would be in a position to retire the change. Have the expected benefits to the organization materialized though? Regardless of whether or not the expected Acceptance Criteria have been satisfied, we must gauge the utility of implementing it. The Rollout Team must therefore look for actionable metrics which can inform them if the Acceptance Criteria were indeed appropriate, or if more work remains to be done by introducing further changes to the backlog.
Synonyms
Acceptance
For example, the pattern “Limited WIP” is often applied in response to unconstrained demand on a team. A suitable acceptance criterion, for coaching a change that involves this pattern to a certain team, might be a WIP limit of 3. This should therefore be included in the Acceptance Criteria of the change item once it is placed on the Transformation Backlog.
Verification addresses the first of these.
This means that the success of the transformation initiative should be measured objectively. What we specifically care about, at all times, is the delivery of value. To this end, each change on the Transformation Backlog must be qualified in terms that include the intent and motivation for using it, and the consequences that can be expected from its correct implementation. The hypothesis for implementing a change, and for leveraging the relevant good patterns and practices, can thereby be tested. Each change item in the Transformation Backlog is given acceptance criteria for verifying its successful adoption by a targeted party. The Transformation Rollout Team must consider two things: are these criteria being met, and are the expected benefits to the organization also being realized?
During enterprise agile transformation, changes must be coached to carefully targeted organizational areas, and with reference to good patterns and practices. It's important to have clear results in mind. Agile transformation is not something that is done purely for its own sake, but in order to achieve tangible benefits.
