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The earliest climate change adaptation plans emerged about ten years ago and are an increasingly important component of the international policy agenda. Because these plans by nature involve long-term objectives, some of the main questions raised in current adaptation tracking research studies are whether and how they will be implemented and what is required for these plans to successfully achieve their objectives? There is no consensus on how to define “successful adaptation” and there are multiple, sometimes competing, interpretations of success. In this working paper, we define three areas where climate change adaptation plans should focus on to successfully achieve their goals: policy and economy, science and learning and legitimacy. We develop a checklist that identifies required aspects for successful adaptation and sustainability in the long-term based on these three areas and related indicators. We suggest that plans follow this checklist as a guideline for plan development and institutional capacity building in the long term. We eventually discuss the adequacy of these metrics for assessing the credibility of developed climate adaptation policies.