Identity Governance Project Checklist for New IAM Teams
A practical implementation checklist for IAM teams starting an identity governance or SailPoint project.
An identity governance project is easier to manage when the team agrees on essential decisions before adding many applications.
Project checklist
- Identify authoritative identity sources and data owners.
- Define joiner, mover, and leaver requirements.
- Select a pilot application with accountable owners.
- Standardise account and entitlement descriptions.
- Design approval and access-request rules.
- Define access-profile or role ownership.
- Plan certification scope and reviewer experience.
- Define provisioning-error handling and evidence requirements.
- Train operational teams before go-live.
Use the checklist as a working document, not a one-time project artifact. Review it after each onboarding wave to improve the delivery pattern.
Turn the checklist into a delivery plan
Start with a two-hour discovery workshop involving IAM, HR, security, service management and the application owner for your pilot. For each identity source and application, record the owner, connection method, account volume, joiner-mover-leaver events, entitlement owner, approval path, and expected provisioning behaviour. This makes hidden dependencies visible before configuration starts.
Create a pilot backlog with small, testable outcomes. A useful first sequence is: aggregate accounts, correlate identities, clean entitlement descriptions, define an access profile, enable one request path, and run a limited review. Set acceptance criteria for each outcome. For example, an onboarding item is not complete merely because it connects; it is complete when a test identity can receive and lose approved access with evidence.
Governance controls to establish early
Define who owns high-risk permissions and who is allowed to approve them. Separate request approval from technical fulfilment where possible, and document what happens when a manager or application owner is unavailable. Agree on how the team will treat orphan accounts, shared accounts, service accounts and failed provisioning events.
Keep a decision register. It should capture the reason for a correlation rule, the owner of an access profile, exceptions to policy, and remediation decisions. This becomes valuable implementation evidence and reduces rework when the programme scales.
For useful baseline controls, review NIST SP 800-53 access control guidance and CISA’s Identity, Credential, and Access Management resources. SailPoint teams should also use the current SailPoint documentation for product-specific design choices.
Related topics: IAM concepts, access reviews, and SailPoint ISC learning.
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