The audit standard an outcome must pass before it may be called delivered.
When we re-audited 312 outcomes that programmes had reported as delivered, 44% failed at least one basic test: the baseline had quietly moved, the benefit was counted twice, or the result did not survive twelve months. Transformation statistics — the industry’s and most organisations’ own — are built on declarations.
The standard replaces declaration with verification. An outcome may be called delivered only after it passes three tests against evidence an independent reader can audit. The tests are deliberately few and deliberately hard to argue with. Every figure Markham publishes passes them; that is what our numbers mean.
The month-0 baseline was frozen before work began, is under change control, and the outcome is measured against it — not against a re-forecast.
Test 1The benefit has exactly one attribution line. No other initiative, budget or business-as-usual movement claims the same value.
Test 2The outcome still holds twelve months after delivery was claimed. Results that decay were project artefacts, not delivered value.
Test 3Verification is performed by someone outside the delivering team, and the evidence trail is written to be re-auditable. An outcome that fails any test returns to the programme as open work.
Transformation programmes, as the exit gate of every Release phase in Draw · Hold · Release.
Annual cohort research — no outcome enters the Markham dataset without passing the standard.
Board and investor reporting, where delivered value needs to survive diligence rather than decorate a slide.
The standard has been applied to more than three hundred outcomes since 2023. Its effect is visible in the gap it exposes:
The Institute stewards the standard and revises it annually. Tests, templates and pass criteria are published in full and may be applied without licence.
Cite as: Markham Institute, “The Verification Standard”, MKM-F-003, v2.0 (2025).