Planning checklist
A Identity & Access Planning Checklist
A Identity & Access Planning Checklist organizes the decisions that matter for organizations controlling accounts, roles, permissions, sign-in, and staff access: the current workflow, ownership, implementation choices, rollout risk, and acceptance evidence.
Working artifact
Identity & Access acceptance checklist
Turn broad completion claims into checks that a project owner can repeat after handoff.
| Acceptance check | Evidence | Responsible owner |
|---|---|---|
| Prove authentication, invitation, and account-lifecycle systems | Repeat the affected journey and test former staff or vendors retain unnecessary access | Owner of oAuth, OIDC, SAML, passkeys, and MFA |
| Prove role, permission, SSO, and MFA implementation | Repeat the affected journey and test users cannot recover accounts without manual intervention | Owner of role and attribute-based authorization models |
| Prove access review, recovery, audit, and migration workflows | Repeat the affected journey and test permissions are inconsistent across connected systems | Owner of audit logging, directory sync, and access reviews |
Define the affected journey
Former staff or vendors retain unnecessary access. Confirm who encounters it, where it occurs, and what changed before it appeared. Then distinguish the visible symptom from dependencies such as oAuth, OIDC, SAML, passkeys, and MFA.
- Affected user
- Starting state
- Observed failure
- Desired outcome
Collect trustworthy evidence
For Identity & Access Management, confirm account ownership, current exports or backups, recovery options, and recent changes before touching production. Preserve exact errors and timestamps that may disappear after a restart or update.
- OAuth, OIDC, SAML, passkeys, and MFA
- Role and attribute-based authorization models
- Audit logging, directory sync, and access reviews
Compare scope options
Frame the first scope around authentication, invitation, and account-lifecycle systems and one observable acceptance journey. Treat role, permission, SSO, and MFA implementation as a later phase unless the evidence shows it is a true dependency.
- Repair
- Extend
- Integrate
- Replace
Write acceptance checks
Repair fits when the core remains sound. Extension fits when the boundary around oAuth, OIDC, SAML, passkeys, and MFA is understood. Replacement fits when ownership, architecture, or operating risk prevents a responsible change.
- Authentication, invitation, and account-lifecycle systems
- Role, permission, SSO, and MFA implementation
- Access review, recovery, audit, and migration workflows
Plan ownership after release
Sequence work around role and attribute-based authorization models. Protect the people affected by “Former staff or vendors retain unnecessary access,” and define the point where rollback is safer than continuing.
- Monitoring owner
- Content owner
- Technical owner
- Escalation path