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Service Acceptance Criteria

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I have often been asked what value Service Acceptance Criteria (SAC) provides. The SAC's importance grows as organizations seek to validate and optimize service value. Do you want to increase value for your business and customers? First, let’s understand what SAC is.

What is Service Acceptance Criteria?

Service Acceptance Criteria is a set of criteria used to ensure that an IT service meets utility, warranty, and experience requirements. Other requirements may also be included, such as manageability and compliance.

Service Validation and SAC

The ‘Service Validation’ portion of the Service Validation and Testing practice ensures that SAC is defined, verified, and documented. Service Validation is performed in the earlier stages of the product and service lifecycle (ideation and design). It confirms that the proposed service design meets agreed service requirements and establishes acceptance criteria for the next stages (development, deployment, and release).

Service Validation also informs the scope and focus of testing activities. Product teams establish the criteria that need to be tested based on the agreed service or product requirements, the Service Design Package, and the organization’s quality standards.

Depending on the level of validation and testing (product, service, or component), the documented assessment criteria are agreed upon and approved by a relevant authority (typically a product owner, service owner, technology team lead, and, where relevant, a customer or representative).

During the ‘Testing’ portion of the Service Validation and Testing practice, test strategies and test plans are developed and implemented based on the criteria identified through Service Validation.

Following testing, a quality specialist reviews test records and reports to verify that the product, service, or component has been tested for the agreed acceptance criteria, and that the tests are valid and trustworthy. This verification may be required before deployment, release to users, or customer acceptance.

Continual Validation and Testing

In the past, SAC was sometimes considered only at the end of the value stream. Today, high-performing service providers apply Lean, Agile, and ITIL 4 methodologies that encourage iterative and incremental ways of working.

The Service Validation and Testing practice is not just about testing a ready-to-release product or service. These activities should be conducted throughout the entire product or service lifecycle. Organizations must continuously define and evolve the SAC throughout that lifecycle.

Validation and testing activities create important feedback loops, informing every step of the digital product lifecycle and ensuring the organization focuses on delivering real value.

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