Questions we answerProcess and ownership
Projects keep slipping — what should I do?
Repeated slippage is information. What matters is where it slips: consistently in the same place is a process problem, everywhere at once is usually over-commitment.
Free · a few minutes · starts from “Something in the team isn't working”
The short answer
Look at where the slippage happens rather than by how much. Consistently at the same stage means a process problem — a hand-off, an approval, a dependency nobody scheduled. Everywhere at once usually means the team is committed to more than it can do, and estimates are absorbing the gap. Slippage concentrated around one person means a bottleneck. Only the second of those is answered by more people, and adding capacity to the first or third makes the pattern harder to see rather than better.
Slipping projects get treated as an estimation problem, and estimation gets blamed because it is the visible part. Estimates are usually a symptom: they absorb whatever the real constraint is until they cannot.
The useful move is to stop looking at the size of the slip and start looking at its location. Slippage is remarkably consistent about where it happens, and that is the diagnosis.
Is it really this?
Worth checking before you spend anything. These are the signals that tend to tell the two apart.
Signs it is
- The same stage is late on most projects, regardless of who is doing it.
- You can name the hand-off or approval where things wait.
- The work itself is fine once it finally gets moving.
Signs it's something else
- Everything is a bit late and the team is visibly at capacity.
- The projects are genuinely larger than anyone estimated, repeatedly, in the same way.
- Quality is also slipping, which suggests pressure rather than process.
What's usually behind it
- A dependency on another team or an approval that is never scheduled as work.
- More projects running in parallel than the team can hold, so everything waits a little.
- One person in the path of everything, with slippage clustering around their availability.
What people usually get wrong
- Adding people to a project that is waiting rather than working.
- Tightening estimates, which hides the constraint instead of removing it.
- Treating each slip as a separate incident rather than looking for the pattern.
The options, and when each one fits
In no particular order. Which of these fits depends on your situation, not on the question you typed.
Fix the point it waits at
Slippage concentrates at one identifiable stage.
Reduce work in progress
Everything is slightly late and too much is running at once.
Unblock the bottleneck
One person is in the path of most of it.
Add capacity
The work is well owned, well sequenced, and simply exceeds the hours.
When doing nothing is the right call
Before changing anything, record where the last five projects actually waited. A fortnight of that data is worth more than a quarter of restructuring, and it usually points somewhere nobody expected.
What the diagnostic asks
- Whether the problem is volume, a missing skill or unclear ownership.
- How long it has been happening and whether it is getting worse.
- Who owns the work and how much of it is written down.
- Whether one person is the common factor.
“I don't know” is always an answer. Nothing is assumed on your behalf.
The routes it weighs
Every diagnostic weighs all ten routes. These are the ones that tend to matter for this question — a description of the rules, not a promise about your answer.
Process improvement
Change how the work flows — remove steps, name an owner, fix the hand-offs.
Redistribute
Move ownership of the work to where it fits, and make that explicit.
Recruit
Recruit a new person for a durable, sizeable need that is central to the team.
Do nothing yet
Record the issue, set a revisit date, and decide what would change your mind.
Outsource
Hand a defined, ongoing scope of work to an external provider.
Develop
Build the capability in someone already in the team, with time and support.
What changes the answer
- Slippage at a consistent point in the process is a process answer.
- Slippage across everything, roughly evenly, points at over-commitment.
- Slippage around one person points at a bottleneck rather than a shortage.
Get your own read
A handful of short questions, then the strongest route for your situation, what's also credible, what we still don't know and what would change our view. No account, no setup.
Related questions
- How do I fix handoff problems?Work fails at the joins more often than in anyone's hands. Fixing it means agreeing what "ready" means at each boundary — and having someone own the outcome across it.
- Who should own this work?Ownership is accountability for an outcome plus the authority to decide. Anything less is a task list with someone's name on it, and it will not hold.
- Quality is slipping in my team. Is it people, process or workload?More often process than people. Slipping quality is usually a sign that the work has outgrown the way it is done, not that anyone has stopped trying.
- Is this a process problem or a people problem?More often process than managers expect. If your most capable person would struggle in the same seat, the work is badly shaped. If one person struggles where others do not, the answer is about that person.
- Should I fix the process before hiring?Usually yes, at least far enough to know what the new person would own. It is cheap and quick, and it either removes the need or tells you exactly what to recruit for. It stops being sensible once it becomes a reason never to decide.
- Do I need a new hire or a better process?Usually the process first, because it is cheap to try and tells you how much of the load is design rather than volume. Sometimes both.