Every Friday you get a link you can open. Not a status report and not a slide deck. The software, running, with this week’s work in it.
The link
The link opens the current state of the build. You use it yourself, with your own data and your own judgement. You can show it to a colleague, a user or a board member without us in the room.
That matters more than it sounds. A status report is the author’s account of the work. A running build is evidence. You do not have to take our word for where the project stands, because you can check.
Why every Friday
We work in two-week sprints. The link arrives every Friday, so each sprint has two: one at the midpoint and one at the end. You never wait more than a week to see something move.
A fixed day also removes a question. You do not have to wonder whether progress is happening or chase for an update. You know when to look, and what you will find when you do.
A demo is not a report
“Seventy per cent done” is a statement about effort. It says nothing about whether the thing works. A demo is different: someone uses the software and you watch what happens. The Friday link is the point of the work, not a ceremony at the end of it.
This is also why we do not send a weekly summary in place of the link. A summary can be written about work that does not run. A link cannot.
What stands behind it
Before a change reaches your link, it runs through our automated end-to-end tests. If it breaks, it breaks on our machines, not in front of you and not in production. Every change is also reviewed before it goes out.
The tests are part of the work, not an add-on. They are also what makes a Friday possible: if checking a change took days of manual effort, nothing would ship weekly. With the suite in place, checking a change is automatic, so a deployable link every week is routine and not a scramble.
When a Friday slips
Some will. A dependency arrives late, an estimate was wrong, or a problem turns out to be harder than the spec suggested. A slipped Friday is a fact about the project, and you should hear it from us first.
We do not hide a slipped Friday. We tell you what slipped and why, before you notice, and we say what changes as a result. The failure condition is visible on purpose. A commitment that cannot be seen to fail is not much of a commitment.
What we ask of you
Open the link. Click through it. Tell us what is wrong, while it is still cheap to change. The most useful feedback arrives early and arrives every week, because the build is still small and a correction is cheap.
You do not need to be technical to do this. If something looks wrong, say so. If you are unsure whether it is wrong, say that. Both are useful. The spec is the reference for what was agreed, so any difference between the link and the document is easy to point at.
What it adds up to
By the end of a build you have opened the software every week, in states from rough to nearly finished. Handover is not a surprise, because you have watched the thing grow. There is no big reveal and no moment where the project goes quiet and comes back different.
That is the intent behind the Friday link: no black boxes, just visible progress. The full process, including what you receive at each step, is on how we work.