When to Kill Projects

As a CPTO, how do you know when to kill a project?

I’ve seen many long-running projects that should have been put out of their misery years ago. But somehow these projects end up with a life of their own and momentum continues to carry them forward. In fact, often the project owners think success is imminent (even though they’ve been thinking that for years).

And that’s just the thing: the project owners aren’t delusional, and these projects aren’t totally unsuccessful. There is just enough success for them to keep going. Of course, ROI is still negative, but success isn’t 0 either.

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The project owners explain that the benefits will accrue later. And that stakeholders should be more patient. “It takes time to start generating the benefits," they say. “We can’t quit now, look at how much we’ve spent,” they sometimes resort to saying. And they point to the tremendous amount of work that has gone into the project and all the activity happening at the moment.

I truly love the passion and dedication of these folks.

But then I go back to the financials, and it just seems like they are throwing good money after bad. Even when they come up with a time horizon to get out of the negative ROI hole, I still don’t feel satisfied.

I think it’s because I know they have been asked this same question by others in the past. And they have given an answer. And the deadline has come and gone. They counseled patience then too.

That’s when this picture occurs to me:

Do you remember this from several years ago? This image made the rounds on some popular product management blogs and was used in many a meeting, I’m sure. It’s quite a powerful way to explain the modern Product development approach.

To me this image is the at the heart of why so many businesses find it difficult to track ROI on a continuous basis.

Many Product & Engineering Teams and indeed the business in general, are unable or unwilling to develop a product roadmap & release approach of this nature (as shown in the bottom view of the image.)

Without incremental product releases that deliver value to the customer at each stage, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to measure ROI.

I think many product teams are fearful of articulating “the skateboard” (from the image), so they just focus on building the wheel. Often the rest of the business doesn’t know any better, so they just go along with it.

6 months after the start of the project someone from finance tries to measure the ROI on the wheel and don’t get anywhere. I wonder why? Maybe it’s because the customer doesn’t need a wheel. They just wanted to get from point A to point B.

So, now you have your first negative ROI reading.

If teams can avoid the idea of building the wheel and instead focus on the skateboard, then the rest of the systems to measure continuous ROI are pretty easy:

• Create a business case before starting the project; if you’ve already started it build one anyway
• Make sure you define the types of Return you’re looking for in the business case (it’s probably not just financial)
• Put in regular stage-gates tied into the product releases (each one should drive customer value)
• Define how much Return is enough for each stage
• Routinely make “go / no-go” decisions at whatever your check-in cadence is based on whether you’re seeing the return or not
• Consistently review the original business case and its assumptions & projections with all stakeholders
• Include all stakeholders at each checkpoint: Sales, Finance, Marketing, etc.
• Don’t get overly attached to the project’s success or failure, if you need to kill it because it’s not meeting the defined Return thresholds then do it
• Equally, don’t be afraid to pivot the project if you discover an alternative successful path

Closing Thoughts

There are some other reasons to kill projects besides not delivering any or enough return for the company. But that’s an article for another time.

Meanwhile, think about measuring continuous ROI and the pieces you need to put in place to do so.

Your product team must be able to deliver incremental value to the customer and the operational mechanisms noted above must also be in place.

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