LEARN. PRACTICE. GROW.Separate testing, compliance and acceptance
A performed test can produce a failure. If recovery takes thirty-five minutes against an approved twenty-minute criterion, marking the activity complete does not turn the outcome into compliance. The product register should help explain which product exists and the state of relevant checks and decisions. If someone proposes accepting forty minutes, assess and authorize that proposal before replacing the baseline. Keep the original result accessible so the decision does not appear to satisfy a criterion that was never demonstrated.
Check authority beyond price
In the exercise, the PM may approve changes up to five thousand euros provided they do not change SLA. A four-thousand request changes agreed recovery, so price alone does not authorize approval. The change budget indicates available resources; delegation states which decisions can be taken. Prepare impact, options, risks and recommendation for competent authority. Splitting payment does not change operational effect. If conditional acceptance is decided, record conditions, action ownership and accepted limits instead of treating silence as agreement.
Include costs continuing after installation
Infrastructure justification does not end at installation effort. In the first-year calculation, three hundred thousand euros of gross savings minus one hundred twenty thousand in licenses, eighty thousand in RUN and forty thousand in decommissioning leaves sixty thousand. These are incremental amounts for the same period in this example, without discounting. Do not treat the result as complete financial appraisal: confirm assumptions, timing and other effects. Work with FINOPS and operational owners to identify what disappears, what remains and who measures the observed difference after delivery.
Review the total effect of proposed responses
An option can improve a local measure while worsening the total result. For the same workload and window, six units at one hundred kWh total six hundred; eight at ninety total seven hundred twenty. Unit efficiency improved but the total rose twenty percent. The calculation does not compute emissions or replace lifecycle analysis. Similarly, buying two services does not establish independence if they share a physical link. Before approval, review the whole arrangement, assumptions and residual exposure instead of closing risk merely because a new contract exists.
Prepare continuation decisions and shifts
A successfully completed stage does not automatically authorize the next. If benefits changed, update justification and present the prepared plan for continuation decision. Reporting should show conditions needed for the forecast, including a capacity decision due tomorrow. For the production window, give the remote shift more than slides: confirm owner, trigger and expected action. Evidence of understanding can come from rehearsal or joint review. The aim is to let those executing recognize the condition and know which authority to involve.
Close with disposition and responsibility defined
If authority terminates the project because justification is lost, closure work remains. Inventory partial products, environments, accounts, data and obligations. Agree what is transferred, retained or retired under applicable decisions and assign owners. A partial product can help another initiative if it accepts its state and obligations. Archiving the initial plan does not execute those actions. Also record learning and information operations needs. These cases are fictional and do not describe a bank’s internal rules; practice helps prepare decisions with clear boundaries.
A four-thousand-euro request fits budget but changes SLA outside PM delegation. The decision needs competent authority and explicit impact.
Common pitfalls
Confusing completed testing with acceptance; treating funds as authority; omitting decommissioning; measuring only unit efficiency; closing with ownerless accounts.
Related topics: Quality and change control · Business case and operational transition
Acceptance and closure require knowing what was demonstrated, what changes, who decides and who owns service and obligations.
Reference: PRINCE2 7 quality practice · PRINCE2 Project Management Version 7