Defining Success Criteria

Before your team runs an evaluation, you’ll want to define what “success” looks like. That starts with a clear, reusable library of Success Criteria.

---

What are Success Criteria?

In Opine, Success Criteria represent the specific capabilities of your product that a buyer might evaluate. Each one defines a measurable outcome or product behavior—something the buyer can verify, test, or integrate into their environment.

Here’s an example tailored to security-conscious SaaS buyers:

Title: Audit Logging & Activity History

Instructions:

Collaborate with the buyer’s security or compliance team to identify required audit fields and log destinations (e.g., SIEM, data lake, compliance tool).

Use the product’s audit logging API or webhook stream to emit activity from a sandbox environment. Confirm the following in a live demo:

• All relevant events (e.g., user role changes, object deletion) are captured

• Log entries include user ID, action, resource affected, and timestamp

• Events arrive in the buyer’s destination in their preferred format (e.g., JSON, syslog, CSV)

If available, demonstrate support for structured filters (e.g., “events by user” or “last 30 days”), and configurable retention or redaction policies. Include GitHub link or code snippet for integration sample.

Subtasks:

• ✅ Connect audit logs to a simulated buyer logging endpoint

• ✅ Verify receipt in buyer system

• ✅ Review the log payload with buyer to confirm field-level fidelity

• ✅ Document how to adapt payload schema for buyer-specific needs

Labels: Security, Integration, Compliance, Buyer-Specific

Success Criteria like this help create a shared understanding of what’s being evaluated—and ensure technical validation aligns with the buyer’s environment and expectations.

---

Creating Success Criteria

To create a new success Criterion:

1

Go to the Criteria Library

Within Opine, click Criteria Library in the left-hand navigation.

2

Create a new Criteria

Use the Create button in the top-right corner to start a new Success Criterion.

3

Fill in the details

• Title: Provide a clear, buyer-facing title (e.g., “Audit Logging & Activity History”)

• Instructions: Add validation steps that reflect how the buyer will integrate and test the capability

• Subtasks: List the key actions needed to prove the value or complete the test

• Labels: Add relevant tags to make this Criterion easy to find later.

4

Save

Click the Save button. Your Criteria is now available across Plans, Templates, and Plays.

Pro Tip: Because Criteria are referenced—not duplicated—updating them in the library automatically updates them everywhere they’re used.

---

Generating Criteria from documentation

If your product has public-facing documentation, Opine can also create Success Criteria from documentation about that feature.

To do this simply:

1

Go to the Criteria Library (as before)

Within Opine, click Criteria Library in the left-hand navigation.

2

Create a new Criteria

Use the Create button in the top-right corner to start a new Success Criterion.

3

Open the Generate dialog

Use the Generate button below the title of the Success Criteria in the right panel

4

Generate the Criteria

Enter the URL for the feature documentation, and submit Opine will then download the URL and use the content to generate instructions for the Success Criteria

---

Track usage across evaluations

When you use Success Criteria from your library in a Plan, Opine automatically tracks where they are being used. You’ll see this in the Referenced evaluations panel when viewing any Criteria in the library:

This helps you:

• Understand which capabilities come up most frequently during evaluations

• Spot patterns in buyer priorities across deals or segments

• Identify where product capabilities may need improvement or clearer positioning

This visibility also reinforces why it's important to manage Success Criteria as shared, reusable components—so insights and updates compound over time.

Next, we’ll look at how to scale this setup.