Your IT project is delayed. What should you do next?

Demanding faster delivery rarely helps by itself. First identify the blockers and whether the current scope, team and working model can still deliver the plan.

Signs that the schedule is losing credibility

• Milestones slip by a week or two, but the final date stays unchanged.
• Testing is pushed to the end to maintain the appearance of progress.
• The vendor reports activity without demonstrating working outcomes.
• Lost time will supposedly be recovered later, with no explanation of how.
• The schedule is not updated after scope changes.
• Key client decisions wait for weeks.
• Spending outpaces delivery of work ready for acceptance.

Common causes

Delay is a symptom. The cause may lie with the vendor, client or project design. Without diagnosis, interventions can create more disruption — for example, adding people to a disorganised team.

• Underestimated scope or omitted work.
• Unclear requirements and frequent priority changes.
• Integration issues or poor data quality.
• Late testing and substantial rework.
• Unavailable key specialists.
• Delayed client decisions and materials.
• Dependencies on external providers or approvals.
• No single owner of the whole project.

Five questions to ask

1. What is genuinely complete and can be verified?
2. What remains and which dependencies block it?
3. What is a realistic completion forecast at the current pace?
4. How does the delay affect cost and business value?
5. Which decisions can shorten the route: reducing scope, changing sequence, adding resources or changing the working model?

Do not accept “we will catch up later” as a plan

A recovery plan must show specific actions and their effects. A promise to accelerate should explain what changes: team, sequence, scope, testing or dependencies.

Without changed conditions, acceleration is usually just a new date based on the assumptions that caused the previous delay.

How to regain control

1. Update progress using demonstrable outcomes.
2. Identify remaining work and the critical path.
3. Stop or limit incoming changes until control is restored.
4. Assign decision owners and short response deadlines.
5. Define a minimum scope that achieves the core objective.
6. Set checkpoints for the coming weeks.
7. Link further funding to measurable outcomes.

When an independent review is needed

If the parties disagree about progress, completion cost or the causes of delay, an independent project health check helps separate facts from opinions.

The situation is especially urgent when there is no working version, most of the budget has been spent or the plan leaves no time for testing and fixes.