At the end of the transition phase is the fourth important project milestone, the Product Release Milestone. At this point, you decide if the objectives were met, and if you should start another development cycle. In some cases this milestone may coincide with the end of the inception phase for the next cycle. The Product Release Milestone is the result of the customer reviewing and accepting the project deliverables.  See  Task: Project Acceptance Review for details.

Evaluation Criteria

The primary evaluation criteria for the transition phase involve the answers to these questions:

• Is the user satisfied?
• Are actual resources expenditures versus planned expenditures acceptable?

At the Product Release Milestone, the product is in production and the post-release maintenance cycle begins. This may involve starting a new cycle, or some additional maintenance release.

Artifacts

Essential Artifacts (in order of importance)	State at milestone
The Product Build	Complete in accordance with the product requirements. The final product should be useable by the customer.
User Support Material	Materials that assist the end-user in learning, using, operating and maintaining the product should be complete in accordance with requirements.
Implementation Elements	The implementation is complete and baselined, and the deployable elements have been incorporated in the final product.
Optional Artifacts	State at milestone
Test Suite ("smoke test")	The test suite developed to validate the stability of each build may be provided in the situation where the customer wants to execute a basic level of on-site testing.
'Shrinkwrap' Product Packaging	In the case of creating a shrinkwrap product, the contractor will need the necessary packaging artifacts to help retail the product.