Key to validate the solution:

Acceptance and Evaluation Criteria Definition. Early on in your project, you and the
team need to make sure that you define the set of requirements that will be used to
validate the resulting projects solution. This set of requirements must have defined,
measurable acceptance criteria for you to use in your validation efforts. If you cant
measure these acceptance criteria, it will be difficult to prove that the solution is
delivering what was promised. I always tell my project teams to think about the end of
the project when our key users and stakeholders are tired of us, and to put together
measurable and objective acceptance criteria that we can use to prove the solution
performs as defined. That way, we are good to go whether our stakeholder love us or
dislike us at the end of the project.

Problem Tracking. Never, ever forget that problem tracking is your formal vehicle for
identifying and tracking identified defects in your solution. This technique ensures that
the defects found during solution validation are addressed and resolved. It is funny how
the problems, defects or issues that get written down, analyzed and have agreed-upon
fixes actually get fixed, isnt it? I find myself using this technique later in the project life
cycle, but the mechanism for identifying, logging and tracking project problems, defects
or issues should be available very early in the project life cycle, just in case.

Root Cause Analysis. Root cause analysis allows you to determine the underlying
reason for a problem or defect in your solution. Identifying the real cause of the problem
is a significant step in addressing and fixing that problem. This straightforward and
effective business analysis technique allows you to correct the actual cause of the
defect versus correcting a symptom of that defect and not the defect itself. It can be all
too easy to fix the symptom of a problem and miss the real problem that is causing your
solution to behave badly.