The Check: Why Post-Ship Verification Changes Everything

The Gap Between Shipping and Knowing

You shipped the fix. The PR was merged, QA passed, and the feature flag is at 100%. But did it actually solve the problem?

Most product teams have a blind spot between "we shipped it" and "it worked." The assumption is that if nothing breaks, the change was successful. But absence of breakage is not proof of impact.

What Is a Check?

A Check is a scheduled verification point — typically at J+14 (14 days post-ship) — that answers a specific question: did this change achieve its intended outcome?

Every Action Item in ContractSpec has acceptance criteria. The Check measures those criteria against real data after the change has been live long enough to matter.

How It Works

1. Define Success Upfront

When an Action Item is created, it includes measurable acceptance criteria. For example: "Step 3 drop-off rate should decrease from 25% to below 10%."

2. Schedule the Check

ContractSpec automatically schedules a Check at J+14. The team gets a reminder, and the system begins collecting data.

3. Measure and Verify

At the scheduled time, ContractSpec evaluates the acceptance criteria against actual metrics. The result is one of three verdicts:

• Pass: The change achieved its intended outcome.
• Partial: Some criteria met, others not yet.
• Fail: The change did not produce the expected impact.

4. Close the Loop

A Pass closes the Loop — the insight from feedback has been verified through implementation. A Fail or Partial generates a new cycle: what went wrong, and what should be tried next?

Why J+14?

Fourteen days is long enough for most product changes to show measurable impact, but short enough to course-correct quickly. It accounts for:

• User adoption curves (not everyone uses the new version immediately)
• Weekly patterns in usage data
• Time for support ticket volume to reflect changes

Teams can customize the interval — J+7 for urgent fixes, J+30 for larger initiatives.

The Difference It Makes

Teams using Checks report a fundamentally different relationship with their shipped work. Instead of "we think it helped," they can say "we proved it worked, and here's the data."

This proof-led approach changes stakeholder conversations. When a PM can show that 3 out of 4 recent changes passed their Checks, the team earns trust — and autonomy.

Get Started

Every ContractSpec workspace includes Checks by default. When you create your first Action Item and export it to your project management tool, a Check is automatically scheduled.

The verification happens in the background. You just need to connect your analytics source so ContractSpec can measure the outcomes.