Glossary
What is a delivery outcome?
The explicit close of a commitment: what actually shipped, and — when the result is not a clean delivery — what differed from the promise.
Tracking means delivery is happening; the outcome means it is closed. A demand is only complete once the outcome is recorded and a lesson has been written.
Why "done" is not a delivery outcome
A "done" checkbox throws away the only data worth keeping at close: how the result differed from the promise. Without that delta, nobody can later answer whether the estimates run light, whether early commitments miss more often than ready ones, or whether one team's "high confidence" means the same as another's. Every closed demand looks identical — a row that stopped changing.
An outcome keeps the delta. Three closes rather than one: delivered as committed, delivered with named differences, or not delivered — and when the result was not clean, the difference is recorded in words, next to the original promise.
Recording a delivery outcome
The record is small on purpose: what actually shipped, and — for any close that is not "delivered as committed" — what differed and why. It is written by the person accountable for the commitment, not computed from ticket states, because the interesting part of a close is a judgement no tracker holds: whether the promise was kept in the terms it was made.
The close is also not the end. A demand is complete only when a lesson has been written — one sentence answering what is now known that was not known at commitment time. A verdict without a lesson records that a delivery ended, not what it taught.
Related terms
- RAG status — A traffic-light health signal on delivery — on track, at risk, off track — that is a judgement by the person accountable, not a computation, and is only worth reading when the reasoning comes with it.
- Honest close — Ending a commitment by comparison rather than checkbox: delivered as committed, delivered with named differences, or not delivered — the difference recorded in words whenever the result was not clean.
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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