Glossary
What is delivery governance?
The practice of deciding what to commit to — establishing value, ownership, capacity, dependencies and open questions before people, budget or a date are promised.
It is distinct from project management, which runs work already committed to, and from task tracking, which records work already planned. Most missed dates are decided at this layer, not during delivery.
Delivery governance vs project governance
Project governance oversees work in flight: steering committees, stage gates, status reviews, escalation paths. It assumes the commitment was sound and concentrates on keeping it on course. Delivery governance sits one step earlier and questions the assumption — it governs whether a specific demand is understood, owned, sized by the delivering team and unblocked enough to be promised at all.
The distinction is where the leverage is. A weak commitment can be steered diligently and still miss, because the miss was decided when it was promised; a sound commitment needs far less steering. Most organisations are heavy on project governance and have no delivery governance at all — the decision to commit happens in a meeting, leaves no record, and is unexaminable by the time it fails.
What delivery governance looks like in practice
Three mechanisms, all records rather than meetings. A readiness bar before commitment: problem, outcome, owner, a capacity figure from the delivering team, dependencies, and the open questions written down as unknowns. A recorded exception when committing early anyway — why now, what is missing, who accepts the risk, what would change the decision — so real deadlines are served without the gamble disappearing. And an honest close: what shipped versus what was promised, with the difference in words when the result was not clean.
None of it requires a committee. It requires that the three moments where delivery is actually decided — the yes, the early yes, and the close — each leave a record someone can later read and disagree with.
Related terms
- Commitment exception — 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.
- Decision-ready demand — A demand 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.
- Delivery path — The level of rigor a demand takes to commitment — fast-track, standard plan, strategic initiative, or urgent exception — chosen at the decision step, so a small contained demand is not forced through the ceremony a strategic one needs.
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.
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