Without Delivery, There Is No Value

Before delivery, all ideas and strategies remain theoretical. They are assumptions - educated guesses that may or may not align with actual needs or expectations. Delivery is the only mechanism through which these assumptions are validated, transforming theory into tangible outcomes that can be measured, tested, and improved.

Value exists only when it is realised, and the only way to realise the value in software is to release it.

No matter how well-intentioned or carefully crafted a plan might be, until a product is delivered and used, its potential remains locked away. Each day of delay represents not only a missed opportunity to create value but also an accumulation of costs - from lost feedback to the risks of market irrelevance. Even the best directions and strategies are hypothetical until they are tested and validated through frequent releases. The Standish Group’s CHAOS Report has consistently shown that projects with long, waterfall-style cycles have significantly lower success rates than those with frequent iterations. Only 29% of traditional projects succeed, while agile projects that release frequently succeed 42%-64% of the time. The difference? Rapid, incremental validation of assumptions.

• Are teams delivering working software to at least some subset of real users every iteration (including the first) and gathering feedback?
• Is feedback from users turned into concrete work items for sprint teams on timelines shorter than one month?
• Are teams empowered to change the requirements based on user feedback?

From US DOD: Detecting Agile BS

The reality is simple: value can only be realised through delivery. No matter how clear your direction or how promising your assumptions about value may seem, they are worth nothing until they are tested and validated through release.

Why Frequent Releases Are Critical

Transparency is the cornerstone of both Scrum and Agile. Delivering a usable, working increment at the end of every Sprint provides the baseline for:

• Inspection: Stakeholders and the team can evaluate progress, functionality, and alignment with goals.
• Adaptation: Course corrections based on real-world feedback rather than assumptions.

Without delivery, transparency is lost. You are left with only assumptions—untested and unproven—that create an illusion of progress while value remains unrealised. The DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics highlight that teams with shorter Lead Time for Changes (LT) are more competitive, as they can push value to users faster and adapt to market changes in real time. Companies with longer LT are often left struggling to keep pace with customer needs, suffering the cost of missed opportunities.

Every unreleased increment leaves value on the table. Each assumption about value—no matter how well-informed—is a risk. Agile and Scrum are designed to mitigate this risk by focusing on short feedback loops:

• Frequent releases validate value early and often.
• Delayed releases magnify risks, wasting time and resources on work that may not deliver the expected value.

The cost of unrealised value grows exponentially the longer a product remains unvalidated. It’s not just a financial cost but an opportunity cost: the insights, iterations, and refinements that could have been gained from early feedback are lost. Change Failure Rate (CFR), another DORA metric, consistently demonstrates that larger, infrequent releases are more prone to failure. By releasing smaller, more frequent updates, organisations can mitigate risk and ensure smoother deployments.

What happened with Windows 8?

For example, I’d offer the outcome of the release of Windows 8 after 6 years of engineering and 6 years of UI/UX validations as evidence of this folly… all be it a significant one. Microsoft spent millions on the work that you would expect around validating that they were doing the right thing in labs and prototypes. It was not until the first Beta of Windows 8 that the true extent of the backlash became evident… but it was too late to do anything about it. The release of Windows 8 wiped billions off Microsoft brand loyalty and recognition, a loss that they have only recently recovered from. Had Microsoft leveraged frequent, iterative releases and shorter feedback loops, they could have detected these issues years earlier, before they became a full-scale business risk. Which is what the changes for Windows 10 were all about, and why we skipped Windows 9. Clear delineation of brand, and a new licence and release model that focused on frequent, iterative releases and shorter feedback loops. Windows 11 is a product delivered almost continuously to production with thousands of people getting daily builds and millions getting weekly.

The Cost of Delayed Delivery

To illustrate, consider a hypothetical scenario: a team works tirelessly for a year, refining their understanding of value and direction. At the end of that year, they release a product that indeed delivers value. But at what cost?

• Lost Value: During that year, customers could have been engaging with early increments, providing critical feedback, and validating assumptions. Each missed iteration represents an unrealised value.
• Opportunity Cost: Competitors may have released sooner, capturing market share and leaving the delayed team playing catch-up.
• The Lack of Adaptation: With no increments released, the team had no chance to inspect, adapt, or pivot. The final product, while valuable, is a result of guesswork rather than empiricism.

Teams that release infrequently also face longer Mean Time to Restore (MTTR), as failures in large deployments take significantly longer to diagnose and fix. Research from DORA indicates that high-performing teams restore service 168x faster than low-performing teams, primarily due to frequent, smaller releases that allow for quicker recovery from incidents.

Scrum and Agile advocate for frequent releases precisely to avoid these costs. The feedback gained from early and frequent releases is invaluable in steering the product towards maximum value with minimal waste.

Conclusion: Delivery Turns Assumptions Into Value

The act of delivering usable increments frequently is not just a practice; it is the foundation of everything else. Everything before delivery is an assumption, and all non-delivered product represents a cost of delay.

Every unreleased increment represents value left on the table. Every delay increases the cost of missed opportunities, lost feedback, and unnecessary rework. By releasing frequently, teams unlock the full potential of Agile, ensuring that value is realised early, often, and with confidence.

Delivering the right thing at the right time begins with getting it into the hands of users as early and as often as possible. Anything less is just an expensive assumption.