Delivery Theatre: The Illusion of Progress That’s Slowing You Down
- Darren Emery
- Apr 21
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 28
"The actors are excellent. The set is convincing. The script is tight. But no one’s buying tickets."
Enterprise delivery today often feels like a West End show. Every ritual is rehearsed. Every metric reported. The Jira board moves. The stand-ups are regular. The sprint reviews have a slide deck. But ask the uncomfortable question - are we actually delivering better outcomes? - and the spotlight suddenly flickers.
This is Delivery Theatre: the carefully crafted illusion of progress that senior leaders unknowingly fund, measure, and reward.
Part 1: The Comfortable Lies We Tell Ourselves
Vanity metrics have become our security blanket.
Velocity. Burn-down. Story points. % of features delivered. All these metrics look great on paper. They help teams show activity. They keep PMOs busy. They tick boxes. But they say nothing about whether we’re delivering value.
Teams game them. Leadership teams track them. Transformation programmes worship them. And delivery becomes a race to look good, not to be good.
The result? A shiny veneer of output that conceals a lack of real change.
Part 2: Why Delivery Theatre Happens
Delivery Theatre doesn’t happen because people are lazy or dishonest. It happens because we’ve confused productivity with progress.
When activity becomes the proxy for value, organisations start optimising for appearances. That’s when the performance begins:
We’ve industrialised Agile - The principles are gone. The playbook remains.
Accountability has been replaced by Performance Management - People optimise to not get fired.
Leadership asks for certainty in complex environments - So teams learn to fake it.
As Dan North puts it: "Software delivery is not a production line. It’s a learning process." But learning is messy. Learning takes time. Learning isn’t linear. So instead, we perform.
Part 3: The Geoffrey Moore Lens - And Where It Goes Wrong
Let’s borrow from Geoffrey Moore’s classic "Four Zones" model. It’s typically used to frame enterprise transformation, but it gives us a powerful diagnostic for Delivery Theatre too:
Zone | Intended Purpose | Real Delivery | Delivery Theatre |
Productivity Zone | Drive efficiency in core ops | Clear priorities, measured by outcomes, not effort | Jira-driven busyness, scripted stand-up status updates, KPIs without context |
Performance Zone | Deliver differentiating value | Customer outcomes over stakeholder optics | Fixed plans, stakeholder driven delivery, success measured in slides |
Incubation Zone | Explore and experiment | Fast feedback, validated learning, actionable pivots | Innovation PR, feature-labelled experiments, approval loops kill momentum |
Transformation Zone | Re-align the business for the future | Clear bets, executive skin in the game, structure follows purpose | Delivery rebranded as change, agile mechanics without mindset, transformation by spreadsheet |
Where there should be productive tension between zones, we often find theatre: superficial signals of alignment that avoid real challenges to the status quo.
Leaders unintentionally fund this. Why? Because theatre is safer than risk. And measurement is easier than trust.
Part 4: How to Spot It in Your Org
Some signs you’re watching Delivery Theatre, not delivery:
Your ‘definition of done’ includes a slide deck
Velocity is celebrated. Impact isn’t measured.
Retrospectives happen. Nothing ever changes.
The status is green. The outcomes aren’t.
And my personal favourite: we celebrate hitting the plan - without ever questioning if it was the right one.
🎭 Delivery Theatre Self-Assessment: Are You Watching a Performance?
Answer honestly. No one's watching. Yet.
For each statement below, mark ✅ if it’s true in your organisation:
Productivity Zone
⬜ Our teams report velocity and story points, but no one can tell you if value was delivered.
⬜ Stand-ups are status meetings in disguise—performed, not used.
⬜ We track utilisation more than throughput.
⬜ A lot of people know how to use Jira. Very few know why - especially with 87 custom fields.
⬜ Teams fear saying “no” because it looks like they’re not delivering.
Performance Zone
⬜ Success is measured by delivery against the roadmap, not market response.
⬜ “Customer feedback” is mostly gathered from internal stakeholders.
⬜ Teams present shiny slides in review meetings but avoid tough conversations.
⬜ Outcomes are vague enough that they’re always ‘on track’.
⬜ Roadmap prioritisation is based on stakeholder influence, not validated demand.
Incubation Zone
⬜ Innovation efforts are mainly PR - nice decks, no runway.
⬜ New ideas must go through the same governance gates as legacy systems.
⬜ Most ‘experiments’ are really thinly disguised feature delivery.
⬜ There's lots of talk about “exploration” and little evidence of decisions being influenced by it.
⬜ Experiments are funded, but scaling them requires a 9-12 month business case.
Transformation Zone
⬜ “Transformation” is managed as a linear 3-year programme with fixed phases and locked timelines.
⬜ Teams are told they’re empowered, but all significant decisions require multi-layer approvals.
⬜ Milestones are pre-defined and reported on monthly, regardless of actual learning or progress.
⬜ A central PMO coordinates delivery across the transformation like it’s a construction project.
⬜ New governance forums were added - none were removed.
Scoring Yourself
0-4 ticks - You’re mostly in the real world. Keep it that way.
5-9 ticks - The curtain’s rising. Time to refocus on outcomes.
10-14 ticks - The performance is in full swing. You’re busy, not better.
15-20 ticks - Welcome to full-blown Delivery Theatre. Burn the script. Start again.
Tip: Don’t treat this as an audit. Treat it as a conversation starter. The goal isn’t to expose people. It’s to stop rewarding performance instead of progress.
Have Leadership across the business complete it individually, then compare scores - the differences will be revealing, especially between delivery teams and sponsors.
Part 5: Confronting the Illusion (Breaking the Fourth Wall)
To kill Delivery Theatre, you don’t need to cancel the show. But you do need to change the script:
Ask the right questions: Instead of "Did you hit the sprint goal?", ask "What did we learn and how will that change what we do next?"
Measure what matters: Use different metrics: Measure cycle time, customer outcomes, lead time to value - stop obsessing over story points or man hours.
Foster psychological safety: Teams perform when they feel safe enough to be honest and open - ensure your culture supports this.
Revisit Moore’s zones regularly: Ensure your strategy and portfolio reflect the right tension - not just comfortable consensus.
And above all, stop rewarding performance theatre. Celebrate real progress, learning, and alignment instead.
The Curtain Call
Executives don’t set out to incentivise theatre. But when the only thing we celebrate is predictability, and the only thing we measure is activity, we get what we deserve.
In a world moving this fast, acting confident is not the same as being competent. So, let’s stop pretending and start delivering.
Real delivery isn’t tidy. But it’s real.
Break the illusion. End the show. Start the work.
