Show, Don't Stage

Real delivery review is what happens when you stop asking teams to perform readiness and start asking them to show it.

Tuesday was the second session of a three-week piece of work on proxy access — still, I think, the most important thing we're not doing at the moment — working out what's actually possible within this financial year. Not without real complexity, but genuinely good to see it moving rather than staying named as important.

Wednesday's Delivery Review, held in person, tightened its shape — ten minutes per team instead of a night spent building a deck, with roles and responsibilities and the integrated delivery schedule mapped out alongside it. Worth noting: by the time we were in the room, some of what teams had prepared had already moved on from the snapshot they'd pulled together — exactly the kind of staleness a live dashboard would close automatically, once the integrated schedule is properly bedded in.

Thursday in London carried two separate threads. The show and tell included a good enough review of one team's pilot of a new delivery lifecycle approach that we're extending it into a second area next week — not with more slides, but by picking teams and testing it for real. Separately, a playback from another team surfaced some options we'll work through next week.

Friday itself was simpler than any of that: a day spent working through the to-do list that two days out of the office had built up.

Lesson learned

The best sign a process is working is that it stops needing performance. When a review — or a self-assessment — has to be staged, that's usually a sign it isn't yet trusted to run on what's actually true.