Rethinking Delivery Models: Problem or Solution?
For organisations that manage programs and projects, a well-defined delivery model often serves as the blueprint for success—outlining ‘how we deliver here.’ These models define the framework, processes, templates, and roles that ensure projects align with organisational goals and achieve efficient delivery.
Yet, despite organisations investing significant effort in defining, implementing, and applying these models, they often fail to achieve the intended outcomes. Projects still run late or over budget, teams perceive delivery models as roadblocks rather than enablers, and some may bypass or circumvent established practices altogether.
This raises a critical question: could the delivery models themselves be part of the problem?
In this article, we explore how to assess the effectiveness of your model and provide actionable insights to help you further mature your approach.
What is a Delivery Model?
It defines the framework, structures, processes, templates, and roles necessary for effective planning, execution, and oversight of projects. It aims to bridge project outcomes with organisational objectives, foster accountability, and streamline decision-making.
However, delivery models don’t always remain static. They may (and should!) evolve over time, adapting to shifts in working methods—such as transitioning to a hybrid delivery model to accommodate agile practices. In other cases, organisations might juggle multiple models simultaneously, such as maintaining separate models for business and IT functions.
Red Flags Indicating the Delivery Model May Not Be Fit-for-Purpose
With the evolution of delivery models, the coexistence of multiple models, and varying levels of understanding and rigour in their application, it’s clear that the concept of fitness-for-purpose is both flexible and dynamic. There are however, certain red flags that may signal that a model is not functioning as intended:
- Frequent delays or cost overruns.
- Poor stakeholder engagement or satisfaction (with either the delivery model itself, or with programs and projects).
- High levels of rework or quality issues.
- Resistance from team members in using the delivery model due to perceived complexity, inefficiency or bureaucracy.
- Lack of consistency of the delivery model with organisational strategy.
Note: these red flags may not always be directly attributable to the delivery model as the root cause. For example, they may be indicators of suboptimal resource capability, insufficient resource capacity, poor portfolio planning, or a lack of understanding of the delivery model. It is important to analyse the actual root causes of any red flags and determine remedial actions to suit.
Assessing Your Delivery Model Health
Evaluating whether your delivery model is fit-for-purpose involves assessing how well it supports delivery goals, meets stakeholders’ needs, and aligns with organisational objectives. The following structured approach can help guide this evaluation:
Step 1. Confirm Success Criteria
This can often be distilled into 2 dimensions:
- Business Value: Is the framework helping deliver measurable value (e.g. ROI, customer satisfaction)?
- Stakeholder Satisfaction: Are key stakeholders’ expectations and needs being met?
Step 2. Assess Framework Characteristics
Evaluate whether the delivery model has the following attributes, and whether these attributes contribute to the agreed success criteria:
- Flexibility: Can it adapt to different project sizes, complexities, and uncertainties?
- Clarity: Are roles, responsibilities, processes, and tools clearly defined?
- Scalability: Does it support small, medium, and large projects effectively?
- Alignment with Industry Standards: Is it based on proven best practices (e.g. Agile, PRINCE2, PMBOK etc.)?
- Compliance with organisational policies
- Compliance with external regulatory or customer requirements.
Step 3. Evaluate Performance Metrics
Analyse the delivery portfolio’s historical performance using key indicators – for example:
- On-Time Delivery: Percentage of projects completed within the planned timeline.
- Budget Adherence: Percentage of projects delivered within budget.
- Quality Outcomes: Number of defects, rework, or customer complaints.
- Team Productivity: Team velocity (if Agile), or resource utilisation rates.
Step 4. Solicit Feedback from Stakeholders
- Project Teams: Gather insights on whether the delivery model is effective, efficient and user-friendly.
- Clients/End Users: Assess satisfaction with project outcomes and delivery process.
- Sponsors/Management: Understand their perspective on value, reporting and risk management.
With the insights gained from these 4 steps, it should be possible to determine how well the delivery model is really working.
Delivery Model Improvement Areas
As a result of this assessment, combined with any red flags already observed, a number of areas for improvement could become apparent. These may include:
- The delivery model is not used.
- Business value of the delivery model is not defined.
- Business value of the delivery model is defined but is lower than required.
- Performance metrics at a portfolio, program or project level are lower than required.
- Focus on risk and quality are lower than required.
- The model is assessed or perceived as insufficiently scalable, flexible, user friendly or aligned to business outcomes.
Identified improvement areas will shape recommendations and an overall roadmap for transitioning to a fit-for-purpose delivery model. Teams should support any recommendations with appropriate change management and support activities.
It is also important to decide what a fit-for-purpose delivery model means for your organisation. An example of this future state is provided in the following section.
With any recommendations and uplift activities, it is important to save a baseline of current model performance, and then compare future performance to that baseline. That way the value of the uplift can be quantified and communicated to all stakeholders – you manage what you measure!
Future State – A Fit-For-Purpose Delivery Model
A fit-for-purpose delivery model is a structured, adaptable, and scalable approach designed to ensure that projects consistently achieve their objectives while meeting stakeholder needs. This typically looks different in each organisation but key features include:
- Efficiency: Minimises waste and streamlines processes.
- Transparency: Provides clear visibility into progress, risks, and issues.
- Resilience: Handles unforeseen challenges without significant disruption.
- Simplicity: Avoids overcomplication while still addressing project needs.
Guiding Principles and Practices
- Customer-Centricity: The delivery model ensures regular customer feedback and alignment.
- Iterative Improvements: Incorporates mechanisms like retrospectives to refine processes continuously.
- Risk Management: Proactively identifies, monitors, and mitigates risks.
- Quality Assurance: Embeds quality checks and standards throughout the project lifecycle.
Attributes
- Well-Defined Stages and Processes: A fit-for-purpose framework typically has clearly defined stages and decision points, even for (A)agile delivery environments:
- Initiation: Define scope, objectives, stakeholders, and project feasibility.
- Planning: Develop a roadmap, schedules, resource plans, and risk assessments.
- Execution: Deliver tasks, track progress, and ensure quality.
- Monitoring and Controlling: Measure performance, manage risks, and ensure alignment with plans.
- Closure: Finalise deliverables, conduct reviews, and document lessons learned.
Clear Roles and Responsibilities
- Defined Roles: Clear roles for project manager, sponsor, team members, and stakeholders.
- Accountability: Responsibility matrices (e.g. RACI) ensure clarity in decision-making and task ownership.
Case Study: Adaptive Governance and Delivery
We have recently worked with a client that had concerns with the suitability of its delivery model across all project types, ranging from infrastructure heavy, operational projects through to digital projects. It was clear that not all stakeholders were satisfied with the granularity of the delivery model to support all project types in a way that was seen as fit-for-purpose.
We reviewed delivery model and project documentation to understand how projects were being delivered, and how well the delivery model was being applied, against good practice.
We also interviewed a range of stakeholders to understand the current pain points in the model:
This helped uncover a number of gaps. A subset of those gaps are listed below:
The recommendations focussed on defining templates, processes, artefacts and checkpoints required for the range of projects in the portfolio, classified by project type and size.
Proposed templates, processes and artefacts were validated with the client before being formally communicated and implemented. This included consistency of reporting metrics to support accurate insights into portfolio health.
The result? A subjectively and objectively improved delivery model that caters for the organisations range of delivery needs.
Conclusion
As organisations evolve and grow, so too do the needs for a structured approach to program and project delivery. A delivery model should define processes and templates across the range of delivery activities undertaken at this point in time. In short, the common language about ‘how we deliver here’.
The value of a delivery model can and should be quantified through both subjective and objective measures. If the value of the delivery model is not clear, or if value is suboptimal, then it may be time for the model’s health to be assessed.
Assessing delivery model health will uncover opportunities for fine-tuning or step change. The case study described above provides a great example of the uplift that is possible.
While this article provides a guide for self-assessment of your delivery model, it might be preferable to bring focus to the delivery model through dedicated external support. For an independent view of health, our adaptive governance and delivery playbook offering can provide you with quick insights and a roadmap for uplift. If this is of interest, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.
