What is a Delivery Showcase and why does it matter?

One of our core values is delivery. From that post:

We are scored on delivery. No excuses. No politics. No points for perfect problems.

Clients care about business value delivered, not perfect shiny code or designs that are beautiful but lay in a Google Drive folder, unimplemented. However, core values are easy to put up on a blog post or in a document, but more difficult to live. How an organization actually executes on a core value determines if the value is real or just words.

There are many ways to execute on delivery, the most prominent one of which is to actually, well, deliver working websites and applications. Others include giving people feedback based on their delivery, prioritizing delivery over other concerns, and celebrating delivery. In this post, I’m going to discuss a ritual we have at Culture Foundry that is such a celebration.

Once a month, we have a scheduled meeting for the entire company. It is called Delivery Showcase. Everyone (not on vacation) gets on a video call. There is a public sign up list in a Google doc and anyone who has delivered something for a client can sign up. Engagement managers are strongly encouraged to do so if their team has deployed something.

We all sit and watch the presenter (who usually shares her or his screen) walk through what has been delivered. Then we ask questions, which may be technical, design or business related.

That’s it. A simple meeting where we talk about what we’ve done.

But in my mind it sends a powerful message about delivery. After all, a meeting with the entire team is expensive. Couldn’t an email serve the same purpose? And why look back at what we’ve done–why not look ahead to future work or what we’re in the middle of? What if nothing has been delivered in the previous month?

The answer, of course, is that though those concerns may be valid having a Delivery Showcase for the entire team, on a regular schedule, emphasizes how important delivery is to everyone on the team. And actions speak louder than words. Actions make your core values live.