Defining Business Metrics and Acceptance Criteria

Before detailed analysis work even begins, planning should establish, in collaboration with stakeholders, the business metrics and high-level acceptance criteria the eventual solution will be judged against. This is deliberately earlier and higher-level than the detailed, item-specific acceptance criteria written later in Domain III — it sets the overall bar the whole initiative is aiming for.

Defining this early matters because it keeps "done" from becoming a moving target decided after the fact — a metric like "reduce processing time by 30%" agreed on during planning gives the whole team a shared, objective target to design and build toward.

Study focus: a scenario where a solution ships and stakeholders can't agree on whether it actually succeeded is usually pointing at missing or vague metrics from this planning task — not a problem with the delivered solution itself.