--- title: "What is a commitment exception? · DeliverySheet" description: "A commitment exception is the record needed to commit before work is ready: why now, what is unknown, who accepts the risk, what would change the decision." canonical_url: "https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/commitment-exception" meta: author: "Tan Gravam" "og:description": "A commitment exception is the record needed to commit before work is ready: why now, what is unknown, who accepts the risk, what would change the decision." "og:image": "https://www.deliverysheet.com/_og/s/o_f7106d6d5c433997.png" "og:image:alt": "Commitment exception — DeliverySheet glossary card" "og:image:height": "600" "og:image:type": image/png "og:image:width": "1200" "og:title": "What is a commitment exception? — DeliverySheet glossary" "twitter:description": "A commitment exception is the record needed to commit before work is ready: why now, what is unknown, who accepts the risk, what would change the decision." "twitter:image": "https://www.deliverysheet.com/_og/s/o_f7106d6d5c433997.png" "twitter:image:alt": "Commitment exception — DeliverySheet glossary card" "twitter:title": "What is a commitment exception? — DeliverySheet glossary" --- > Index of every page on this site: [llms.txt](https://www.deliverysheet.com/llms.txt) [← All terms](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary) **Glossary ** # **What is a commitment exception?** A commitment exception is a recorded justification required to commit to work that is not yet decision-ready, naming why it is early, what is still unknown, who accepts the risk, and what condition would change the decision. The point is not to prevent early commitments — real deadlines exist — but to make them countable. At quarter end you can then ask whether the misses came from early commitments or from a readiness bar that is set wrong. ## **The four fields, and why each one is load-bearing** Why now: the deadline, the dependency or the commercial reason that makes waiting more expensive than committing blind. Written down, it is checkable later; unwritten, every early commitment retroactively becomes "we had no choice". What is missing: the specific unresolved thing — an unestimated craft, an unowned dependency, an unanswered question — so the gap is a work item rather than a feeling. Who accepts the risk: a named person, not a team and not "the business", because a risk owned by everyone is owned by nobody when it lands. And what would change the decision: the condition under which this becomes a normal commitment or gets pulled — the only field that turns an exception into something you can act on before the quarter ends. ## **Why banning early commitments makes it worse** A ban does not remove the pressure that produces early commitments; it removes the record of them. The promise still gets made, in a meeting or a thread, and it enters delivery indistinguishable from work that cleared the bar. The organisation then measures a readiness process that most of its real commitments never went through. Requiring four fields costs a minute and inverts that. Early commitments stay possible, become visible, and — because they are countable — can be compared against ready ones at quarter end. If the ready ones miss just as often, the bar is wrong, and that is worth knowing. [The essay behind “Commitment exception” →](https://www.deliverysheet.com/blog/early-commitment-exception) [Topic: Deciding what to commit to →](https://www.deliverysheet.com/topics/commit) ## **Related terms ** - [Delivery commitment](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/delivery-commitment) A delivery commitment is a recorded promise to deliver a stated outcome by a date, made by a named owner with the capacity the delivering teams agreed to give, and kept as a baseline that later results are compared against. - [Delivery governance](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/delivery-governance) Delivery governance is the practice of deciding what to commit to — establishing value, ownership, capacity, dependencies and open questions before people, budget or a date are promised. - [Decision-ready demand](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/decision-ready-demand) A decision-ready demand is one that can responsibly be committed to: the problem stated apart from the proposed solution, an intended outcome, a named owner, a first capacity figure, the dependencies, and the open questions written down as unknowns. This definition comes from building **DeliverySheet** — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date. $189/month per workspace, unlimited members. 7-day free trial — card required, cancel before it ends and you're not charged. I answer the support email myself. [**Start 7-day trial **](https://www.deliverysheet.com/login?next=/app) [**All terms **](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary) [**See pricing **](https://www.deliverysheet.com/pricing) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DefinedTerm","@id":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/commitment-exception#term","name":"Commitment exception","description":"A commitment exception is a recorded justification required to commit to work that is not yet decision-ready, naming why it is early, what is still unknown, who accepts the risk, and what condition would change the decision.","url":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/commitment-exception","inDefinedTermSet":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary#termset"} ``` ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/#website","@type":"WebSite","description":"Turn raw work requests into structured, decision-ready demands before you commit people, budget, or a date. 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