7. Delivery model
The delivery model defines how a project is operationally structured, managed, and executed – shaping the roles, responsibilities, and relationships that underpin successful outcomes. In Australian Government digital projects, selecting the right delivery model is essential to balancing agility with accountability, enabling collaboration across internal teams, vendors, and partner agencies to support clear decision-making, efficient resource use, and alignment with delivery objectives, while also allowing for flexibility in response to evolving needs and constraints.
The SRO plays a key role in endorsing the delivery approach, ensuring it supports effective governance, stakeholder engagement, and value delivery. This includes making informed decisions about sourcing strategies, delivery methodologies (e.g. agile, waterfall or hybrid), and the integration of delivery partners. A strong delivery model blends governance with agility, enabling collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement to ensure your program delivers meaningful outcomes. When the delivery model is not clearly defined or lacks executive sponsorship, projects can suffer from fragmented accountability, unclear escalation paths, and misaligned incentives.
For project teams, the chosen delivery model directly influences how work is planned, executed, and monitored and shapes the team structures, communication flows, and delivery cadence. However, challenges often arise, particularly in the Australian Government context, when delivery models are imposed without sufficient tailoring to the context of the project, funding cycles and delivery environment, or when roles and responsibilities are not clearly articulated. Misalignment between delivery partners, inconsistent ways of working, or lack of clarity around ownership can lead to inefficiencies, duplication, and delivery delays. Embedding regular reflection and adaptation into the delivery model helps teams respond to emerging challenges and continuously improve delivery performance.
Key lessons
Adaptive delivery pathways
Agility and flexibility embedded into program management from the outset supported delivery. Milestones, practices and ways of working that supported continuous learning, early decisions, and the ability to revisit and adapt delivery pathways helped projects respond as new information emerged.
Real life learning
A large, multi-year transformation program was operating under a strong commitment to delivering mid-term deliverables, with the initial delivery plan setting the direction. This commitment, however, appeared to lock the program into a single delivery pathway and limited the program’s flexibility to adapt over time.
Program reviews indicated that key decisions could have been made earlier, and that the program did not sufficiently question or revisit the initial plan. Over time, the program gradually introduced a more agile program management approach, alongside increased experimentation at the project level. This included ‘pioneer’ projects used to test assumptions and delivery pathways, enabling greater responsiveness and learning.
The experience highlighted the risks of locking into a single delivery pathway too early. Greater flexibility, experimentation and decision-making discipline would have made it easier to question assumptions, test alternatives and revisit decisions as the program evolved.
Related actionable insights:
1 - Blend delivery methods | 2 - Align operations with system design | 4 - Embed ongoing improvement | 5 - Embed change control
Methodology alignment
Delivery methodologies that were aligned and tailored to the solution design improved delivery consistency and user adaptability. For example, blended methods where traditional waterfall (stage‑gate) requirements were in place alongside agile practices (iterative releases) to suit the solution improved business acceptance.
Real life learning
In a complex, multi-agency project delivering in a dynamic, dependency-driven environment, the team shifted from scheduled six-weekly releases to weekly releases, improving delivery flexibility.
This allowed the team to release functionality when it was ready, rather than waiting for fixed milestones, and respond more effectively to changing upstream system dependencies. As a result, delivery became more flexible and better aligned to evolving dependencies and priorities.
“We did Managing Successful Programmes, and it was really helpful because we think about our structure in three levels, program management on top, then project management, and beneath that is an agile delivery methodology. Making sure we have a clear understanding of those three frameworks and how they’re used has been a helpful exercise.”
Practitioner perspective
Related actionable insights:
1 - Blend delivery methods | 2 - Align operations with system design | 4 - Embed ongoing improvement
Delivery discipline
Structured delivery practices and early change control supported delivery discipline. They helped keep projects aligned to their objectives and reduced uncontrolled change, scope creep, delays and cost overruns. Promptly reflecting approved baseline changes in project documentation also supported delivery control.
Real life learning
A technology uplift project and cloud transition involved a complex system integration. The project team improved their defect triaging by taking a more structured approach to analysing and grouping bugs. Rather than treating issues individually, the team invested time upfront to identify common patterns across defects and cluster them accordingly.
The team made use of the tag features in DevOps to support triaging, categorisation and resolution. This made it easier to understand underlying root causes and focus effort where it would have the greatest impact.
Related actionable insights:
1 - Blend delivery methods | 3 - Maintain executive engagement | 5 - Embed change control
Actionable insights
Blend agile and traditional delivery approaches to suit delivery and set realistic schedules.
Aim to avoid ‘big bang’ delivery, where all functionality is released at one go-live. Tailor delivery methods based on the solution design, vendor arrangements, and integration complexity. Break work into manageable increments and focus the team on delivering usable, valuable services early and often. Combine agile flexibility with structured governance so the program can meet compliance requirements and still adapt as needed.
“Never ever go near anyone who suggests you can do a ‘big bang’ delivery. Make sure its scheduled, make sure its achievable by your suppliers, make sure it meets expectations."
Practitioner perspective- Align operational guidelines with system design.
Leverage the project's momentum and resources to update policies, procedures, and roles alongside system design so the organisation is ready for how the new system will operate. Work with the business owners to consult early to clarify roles and process changes and to ensure there will enough capacity to sustain the system. - Prioritise regular engagement between the project team and project executive.
Frequent informal check-ins help surface issues early and avoid surprises at governance board meetings. Early visibility enables timely, well‑considered responses and supports more effective decision-making. Embed ongoing delivery improvement practices.
Create regular formal and informal opportunities to reflect on delivery and capture lessons throughout delivery.“When you’ve got these fiscal constraints – ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ as they say, you become very innovative in how you deliver it.”
Practitioner perspective- Embed change control into the delivery model from project initiation.
Establish clear processes within the model to manage changes from the outset, including checkpoints in planning and governance forums. If changes arise, be clear about the impacts on cost, schedule, dependencies, risks, and benefits, and update plans accordingly, using processes that align to the delivery model.