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Fred George

The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of software that creates value.

George's insight is that most teams are optimising for the wrong thing — velocity, story points, sprint cadence — when the only metric that matters is whether customers keep using what you ship.

The Secret Assumption​

Continuous Delivery​

  • Ship small: the longer the feedback loop, the more assumptions compound unchecked.
  • Early delivery surfaces real requirements — what customers say they want and what they actually use diverge quickly.
  • Continuous delivery is a discipline of humility: you don't know what good looks like until you see someone use it.

Customer Signal​

  • Customer satisfaction is the only lagging indicator worth tracking; everything else is a proxy.
  • The secret assumption is that someone has validated the problem being solved — most teams never check.
  • Value is defined by the person using the software, not the person writing it.

Engineering Culture​

  • High-performing teams remove process that doesn't serve the customer, not add more ceremony.
  • Craftsmanship and speed are not in tension — sloppiness is slow, not fast.
  • The coach's job is to surface the assumptions the team is too busy shipping to examine.

Context​

  • Protocols — continuous delivery as a repeatable engineering protocol
  • Agency — the discipline required to ship before it feels ready
  • Performance — customer satisfaction as the only measure that compounds
  • Platform — the tools and practices that make continuous delivery possible

Questions​

If customer satisfaction is the only metric worth tracking, what does your current sprint ceremony actually measure — and does any of it trace back to a customer using something?

  • What is the secret assumption underneath your current highest-priority project?
  • At what cadence is feedback from real users entering your build loop?
  • Where does the craft argument break down — when does continuous delivery become continuous half-delivery?