It is critical for you to understand how your product teams are performing. It’s all too easy for teams to make encouraging noises whilst spinning their wheels, delaying the point where problems are revealed causing delays to be compounded. What is needed is a regular check-in, or 'Delivery Review' on each team’s progress against their plans:
- Are they delivering work as expected?
- Is this work resulting in the impact expected?
A Delivery Review is a quick weekly check-in can answer both questions, as well as offer an opportunity to unblock teams that are getting stuck. This format gives an overview of operational metrics, delivery progress and team status, and sets up a joint problem solving session with leadership for teams that need it.
There are three pieces to the Delivery Review system:
- Delivery Update: teams fill in a simple template each week
- Delivery Review: leadership reviews the Delivery Updates and decides which teams (if any) need closer attention
- Office Hours: time for leadership and teams to come together and solve problems together
Weekly rhythm Delivery Update
This is a simple template for each to complete, each week. It should take the product manager or delivery manager 5–10 minutes per week, and consists of three sections:
- Operational metrics: the impact you want the team to drive (lagging indicators)
- Delivery progress: the work the team has done (leading indicators)
- Team report: team context that provides colour around what’s been going on in the past week
These sections are described in more detail below.
Basic Delivery Update template 
