--- title: "What is a delivery path? · DeliverySheet" description: "A delivery path is the rigor a demand gets: fast-track, standard, strategic or urgent, chosen at the decision step so small work skips heavy planning." canonical_url: "https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/delivery-path" meta: author: "Tan Gravam" "og:description": "A delivery path is the rigor a demand gets: fast-track, standard, strategic or urgent, chosen at the decision step so small work skips heavy planning." "og:image": "https://www.deliverysheet.com/_og/s/o_330e46730394399d.png" "og:image:alt": "Delivery path — DeliverySheet glossary card" "og:image:height": "600" "og:image:type": image/png "og:image:width": "1200" "og:title": "What is a delivery path? — DeliverySheet glossary" "twitter:description": "A delivery path is the rigor a demand gets: fast-track, standard, strategic or urgent, chosen at the decision step so small work skips heavy planning." "twitter:image": "https://www.deliverysheet.com/_og/s/o_330e46730394399d.png" "twitter:image:alt": "Delivery path — DeliverySheet glossary card" "twitter:title": "What is a delivery path? — 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 delivery path?** A delivery path is 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. The path changes what commitment requires: a fast-track demand takes a light confirmation (owner, expected outcome, target); standard and strategic paths require an agreed capacity figure or a recorded exception; an urgent demand that is not ready ALWAYS requires the exception. One-size rigor fails in both directions — theatre for the small work, rubber-stamping for the large. ## **The four delivery paths** Fast-track is for small, contained demands — commitment takes a light confirmation: owner, expected outcome, target. Standard is the default for real work: it requires the readiness evidence, including a capacity figure the delivering team agreed to. Strategic is for demands large enough that being wrong is expensive — same bar as standard, applied with the seriousness the stakes deserve. Urgent exception is for demands that cannot wait for readiness: they may be committed early, but only with a recorded exception naming why, what is missing, who accepts the risk, and what would change the decision. The path is chosen at the decision step, by a person — it is a judgement about how much rigor this demand deserves, not a computation from its size. ## **Why one-size rigor fails** Apply the full ceremony to everything and the small work suffocates: a two-day fix filling in a dependency register is theatre, and people learn to route around the process — which is how shadow queues are born. Apply a light touch to everything and the large work gets rubber-stamped: a quarter-defining initiative commits on the same one-line confirmation as the fix, and its unexamined unknowns surface in month two. A delivery path makes the rigor an explicit, recorded choice. The governance question stops being "did we follow the process?" and becomes "did we choose the right level of scrutiny for what this is?" — which is a question someone can actually be accountable for. [The essay behind “Delivery path” →](https://www.deliverysheet.com/blog/how-much-process-a-request-needs) [Topic: Deciding what to commit to →](https://www.deliverysheet.com/topics/commit) ## **Related terms ** - [Definition of ready](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/definition-of-ready) A definition of ready is the bar a piece of work must clear before it is accepted — applied at ticket level in Scrum, and far more consequentially at commitment level, before people and a date are promised. - [Scope creep](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/scope-creep) Scope creep is the accumulation of unrecorded additions to a commitment's scope — each too small to renegotiate the promise, together large enough to break it. - [Delivery roadmap](https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/delivery-roadmap) A delivery roadmap is a time-ordered statement of what an organisation intends to deliver — a communication artifact that sequences intentions, distinct from the commitment record that says what was actually promised, by whom, against what capacity. 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/delivery-path#term","name":"Delivery path","description":"A delivery path is 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.","url":"https://www.deliverysheet.com/glossary/delivery-path","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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