A performance goal, a delivery contract, and a daily planning practice do different work. Renee Cheng separated those roles in the second half of the 2017 conversation about high-performance projects.
Her examples included net-zero goals, post-occupancy performance, peer reviews, shared incentives, and Lean routines. The common lesson was that aspiration alone does not tell a team when to review a decision, how rewards are shared, or how commitments become visible in daily work.
Performance goals do not end at substantial completion
Renee Cheng talked about projects where performance still had to be demonstrated after people moved into the building. That extended responsibility beyond the usual handoff moment. She also described the need to communicate with occupants about how complex building systems were meant to operate.
The examples showed why a technically sound goal did not end the work. Operations, communication, and user behavior remained part of the performance discussion.
The point is not to make the project scope endless. It is to recognize that a performance promise often includes a longer responsibility chain than the contract language first suggests.
Early reviews matter only if they happen before the real decision
Renee also described GSA peer reviews that arrived too late to change major design-build choices. On paper, the milestone looked reasonable. In the cases she discussed, major systems and strategic directions were already hard to move.
The GSA example showed why a listed review milestone was not enough by itself. The real question was whether the review occurred before the team had committed to one path.
That is why timing matters as much as the review itself. A process can be technically present and still miss the moment when it would have mattered most.
IPD and Lean solve different problems
One of Renee's clearest contributions was separating the contract from the operating method. In her framing, an IPD-style agreement can help align incentives and create a shared financial interest in the outcome. As she put it, “Lean provides the means to collaborate” through practices that add planning, accountability, measurement, and transparency to daily work.
That distinction is useful because teams sometimes expect the contract choice to carry the whole burden. It does not. A better agreement can improve motivation. It cannot replace the routines that help people coordinate, test assumptions, and make visible what is slipping.
The reverse is also true. A team can borrow collaborative habits without a full multi-party agreement and still learn something. The contract and the daily practice are related. They are not interchangeable.
Up-front effort is different from wasted effort
Renee also addressed the complaint that collaborative delivery takes too much time up front. She did not deny the burden. The people she interviewed described early team building, role clarity, and agreement work as time spent planning instead of later firefighting.
At the next review or contract conversation, separate three decisions. Confirm that the review is early enough to affect the work. Confirm what the agreement rewards. Then name the daily practice that will show whether the commitment is being kept.
A shared goal can set direction. The team still has to choose the agreement, review timing, and daily practice that will carry it into the work.
