  Confronting the predictions of numerical calculations with observations is an
important tool to progress with our understanding of the mechanism triggering
the outbursts of dwarf novae and soft X-ray transients. Simultaneous
multi-wavelength observations are of particular importance in this process as
they contain information about the chronology of the outbursts as e.g. the
famous UV-delay observed in dwarf novae. We review key-predictions of the disc
instability model (DIM) and confront them with the corresponding observations.
