Go-live acceptance starts when implementation presents the agreed work for a decision. It ends with explicit acceptance, a conditional handoff or a documented reason to continue implementation. Closing every task is not necessarily customer acceptance.
Choose software for the decision and its handoff. Technical deployment, security review and contractual acceptance requirements belong to the organization’s relevant owners; this guide does not define them.
The three records to keep distinct
The implementation plan describes work. The acceptance record describes the decision about that work. The ongoing account record describes what the next owner will maintain. A single completion percentage may not distinguish all three.
| Handoff | Required owner | Record to inspect |
|---|---|---|
| Present completed work | Implementation lead | Agreed scope and completion evidence |
| Review acceptance | Authorized customer or internal decision-maker | Outcome and outstanding conditions |
| Transfer unresolved items | Named continuing owner | Accepted exception and next action |
| Close implementation | Project owner | Acceptance reference and handoff destination |
Define who may accept the result before sending approval requests. A product cannot infer that authority from an email address.
A project-native candidate
Rocketlane documents phase dependencies and task or document approvals. These are candidate capabilities for representing readiness and acceptance within an existing implementation project.
Ask the supplier to demonstrate the particular account configuration. A dependency can represent an order of work, while an approval records a configured decision. Neither proves that a production system is ready or that an acceptance is legally sufficient.
The existing project tool remains the baseline. A controlled acceptance document linked to the project may be adequate where the number of participants and exceptions is small. Dedicated approval administration becomes more useful when the team cannot identify which decision applies to which implementation result.
Demonstrate conditional acceptance
Use a synthetic project with one unresolved item that does not prevent the agreed handoff. Have the authorized participant accept the result with that item assigned to a continuing owner. Ask implementation and the ongoing owner to find the same condition.
Then have a reviewer reject a different deliverable. Show how the remaining implementation work stays distinguishable from accepted work. Record any manual convention required instead of assuming the product has native conditional acceptance.
Avoid an ownerless tail
An exception passed to an ongoing team needs a person, next action and source context. Leaving it in a completed project’s comment thread can make it difficult to find. Determine what information reaches the continuing system and who confirms receipt.
See kickoff readiness for the earlier acceptance of the project brief. The Customer Onboarding hub separates those two decisions.