1 minute read
Quick thought I keep coming back to.
When a team cuts quality to hit a date, everyone treats it as a delivery problem. It isn’t. It’s a risk decision — contractual penalties, customer trust, sometimes the accounts themselves — and it’s a decision the delivery team was never authorised to take.
Leadership rarely says “cut the quality” out loud, because saying it out loud puts them on the hook. So the risk gets absorbed silently, by the people least able to carry it.
The fix isn’t heroics. It’s one sentence: “We can’t hit this date at our definition of done — who is authorised to sign off on shipping below it?” In writing.
I’ve yet to see anyone senior enough actually sign.