- Introduction
- Definition of Production Acceptance
- The Benefits of a Production Acceptance Process
- Implementing a Production Acceptance Process
- Full Deployment of a New Application
- Distinguishing New Applications from New Versions of Existing Applications
- Distinguishing Production Acceptance from Change Management
- Case Study: Assessing the Production Acceptance Process at Seven Diverse Companies
- Summary
- Test Your Understanding
- Suggested Further Readings
Distinguishing Production Acceptance from Change Management
Another question I frequently hear is: How does one distinguish production acceptance from change management, since both seem to be handling software changes? The answer is that production acceptance is a special type of change that involves many more elements than the typical software modification. Capacity forecasts, resource requirements, customer sign-off, service desk training, and close initial monitoring by developers are just some of the usual aspects of production acceptance that are normally not associated with change management. The other obvious difference between the two processes is that, while production acceptance is involved solely with deploying application software into production, change management covers a wide range of activities outside of production software, such as hardware, networks, desktops, and facilities.