A checkpoint is a fixed date
A pod is a monthly fee on a 12-month term, with a production checkpoint at day 90 for a small pod or day 120 for a large pod. People read "checkpoint" and picture a status meeting with slides. It is not that. It is a day on the calendar when the first system is measured against the number from the assessment, on a metric your finance team already tracks.
The date is fixed: day 90 for a small pod, day 120 for a large pod. The number comes from the assessment, before the pod starts. Nothing about the checkpoint is decided on the day. The day is when we find out.
Three things have to be true
The number came from the assessment, not from the pod
The assessment gives you an AI inventory, risk tiers, the top 3 workflows with today's numbers and a 90-day plan. The pod is measured against one of those numbers: hours a week, days to close, invoices touched by hand, calls answered. The pod does not get to pick its own target after the fact.
The metric is yours
We measure on a metric your finance team already tracks, pulled from your systems. Not a dashboard we built, not a count of tickets closed. If the system handled every document in the queue and your month-end close still took the same number of days, the number did not move. Volume is not the result. The number is.
Someone on your side can read the result and decide
The checkpoint ends with a decision about what the pod builds next. Your backlog owner makes that call with the number in front of them. That is the point of putting the measurement on a date: the decision is made against a result, not against a plan.
The day is one comparison and one decision
The pod lead brings the number from the assessment and the number from your systems, side by side, with the gap between them. The numbers come from your systems, not ours.
Then you decide what is next.
A miss is reported, explained, and fixed
We do not hide it. It is reported in the same place a good number would be.
We say why. We check three reasons first, and each has a different fix. The workflow was not the one that mattered: the backlog order changes. The system is live but the people around it kept doing it the old way: the handoff was not finished, and the pod goes back to it. The number was measuring the wrong thing: your finance team re-cuts it with us, in writing, before anyone measures again.
We agree the fix before the work goes on. A miss at the checkpoint does not mean the months after it run the same way. They start with the reason and the fix, agreed with your backlog owner, and a date to measure again.
What does not happen: the target does not move unless your finance team signs the change in writing, the pod does not switch to a new project to change the subject, and the report does not swap the assessment's number for a friendlier one. You agreed on a number. The checkpoint reports against it.
Day 90 or 120 is the earliest measurement that means something
Thirty days is not enough to see a month-end close with the new system in it, or a quarter of invoices through the new intake. The small pod's checkpoint lands after a full quarter of your numbers. The large pod's lands a month later, with more systems in scope. Those are the earliest dates where the measurement means something.
Where the checkpoint is written down
The pod page has the checkpoint in the timeline. The Operate page covers what our dedicated support and maintenance team runs after launch. Monitoring and testing after launch covers how we know whether the system is still doing the job: evals, tests on your own real cases that re-run after every change, and a daily check on your numbers.
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