Introduction
The receipt is the project’s permanent history and it shows how changes arrived in Production ready version of the solution. This page explains what the receipt records, what the snapshot gives you and how to produce the evidence pack.
What the receipt records
The receipt records the material events in the life of a project: the attachments the project started from, the generation of its outputs, the approvals given and the promotion itself. Each event is recorded with who did what and when, so the history reads as a sequence rather than as a set of unconnected facts.
Approvals are recorded against a named approval authority, so the record shows who accepted each step rather than leaving it to be assumed.
Because the record is built as the work happens, there is nothing to assemble afterwards and nothing to remember to write down.
The evidence pack is therefore the by product of the build rather than something a consultant assembles at the end. The record is append only and tamper proof, meaning that entries are added as events happen and are not rewritten, and the record is sealed when promotion completes.
The snapshot and the print actions
The snapshot gives a point-in-time view of the project, which is what you want when you need to show the position as it stood on a particular date. The print actions produce the evidence pack, which is the version you hand to an auditor, a customer or an internal reviewer.
The receipt is the customer’s asset
The receipt belongs to the end customer finally and in it, it holds the evidence showing that a change was designed, tested, approved and promoted deliberately, by named people, in that order. When someone asks months later why a certain functionality behaves as it does, or on what basis it was allowed into Production, the receipt is the answer and no reconstruction is needed.
Keep the evidence pack with the customer’s own change records. A receipt that stays inside the sandbox is worth far less than one located and stored where the people who ask the questions can find it.