Your project is delayed. You need to know whether it can be saved.

Senior diagnosis across code, architecture, delivery and team setup. An independent view of what is actually wrong — and what it will take to fix it. Stabilization and execution if the project is worth rescuing.

The situation

The project is late. Status reports no longer reflect reality.

You have been told the project is 90% complete for months. Releases slip. The vendor or team explains each delay as an isolated incident. You cannot tell whether the plan is recoverable or whether you are accelerating toward a larger failure.

You are dealing with

A project that has missed multiple deadlines and now has an unreadable status. The original estimates, team or vendor setup no longer maps to what needs to happen.

What you need

An independent view of the actual state — architecture, delivery risk, team capability, remaining work — before committing more budget, extending a contract, or making a public commitment.

What you cannot afford

Another optimistic recovery plan from the people who built the current one. A second failure that delays a strategic product or embarrasses the business in front of a customer or investor.

What senior diagnosis finds

The gap between reported progress and demonstrable completion. The technical risks leadership has not been told about. Whether the project deserves more investment or a controlled stop.

Diagnostic approach

Three phases. Evidence first, execution only if warranted.

We do not start with a solution. We start with an independent read of the actual state — code, architecture, delivery history, team capability and vendor setup — and a clear recommendation before any execution begins.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Phase 01

Assessment

Independent review of the codebase, architecture, delivery system, remaining work and vendor or team structure. We identify the gap between reported and actual completion, surface the technical risks, and produce a clear recommendation: rescue, partial rebuild, replace, or stop.

5 business days · Fixed scope

Phase 02

Stabilization

If rescue is warranted, we take direct ownership of the critical path. Production is stabilized. Scope is reset to what is achievable. A 30-day recovery plan replaces percentage-complete reporting with demonstrable milestones and transparent risk ranges.

30 days · On-site or embedded

Phase 03

Execution

We stay through delivery or transfer a complete handover to the internal team or a new vendor. Architecture decisions are documented. Ownership is clear. The conditions that caused the failure are named and addressed, not papered over.

Scoped to release · Optional

What you receive

Concrete outputs, not a slide deck.

01 / 04
Risk map
Every unresolved technical risk — architecture, integration, security, deployment, data — mapped to business impact and ranked by severity. Not a generic checklist. Evidence from the actual codebase and delivery history.
02 / 04
Completion assessment
A clear picture of what is demonstrably done, what is partially complete and what has not started. Percentage-complete reporting is replaced with milestone evidence and a remaining-work range.
03 / 04
Recovery recommendation
One of four positions: rescue and stabilize; partial rebuild; replace the vendor or team; or controlled stop. Each recommendation is grounded in business viability, remaining cost, architecture state and delivery confidence.
04 / 04
30-day action plan
If the project is worth rescuing, the plan covers the first month: scope freeze, technical remediation, ownership reset, stakeholder communication and the governance cadence that replaces informal status updates.

What if the project should not be rescued?

We will tell you. We are willing to recommend a controlled stop or a narrowed scope when the economics no longer support continuation. A rescue decision starts with whether the project still deserves to exist in its current form. That question is asked first, not after the assessment is complete.

Case studies

Case 1

Identified up to $220k/month in delivery-related revenue leakage

A software client had active development, ongoing releases, and a long-term product relationship, but delivery problems were starting to threaten the commercial value of the account.

Critical bugs, piecemeal releases, and work not tied to business objectives were creating a growing cost of poor quality. We built a business case around what poor delivery was costing and what fixing it could unlock.

Impact:

Estimated delivery-related revenue leakage: $50k-$220k/month
Broader potential monthly impact modeled around $315k

Read the full case study

Case 2

Turned a small efficiency request into a $4.19M self-funding roadmap

A modest time-saving ask uncovered a far larger structural constraint sitting underneath the day-to-day work.

We mapped the real opportunity and built a phased roadmap that pays for itself as it is delivered, rather than a single large bet.

Impact:

Modeled value of the phased roadmap: $4.19M
Each phase funds the next

Read the full case study

Case 3

Turned a routine review into a €1.05M resilience business case

A German funding intermediary with a well-built stack and a lean 24-person team had one systemic constraint: no tested recovery layer across eight interconnected systems — one WordPress database as the single source of truth for all of them.

A modest environment review uncovered €508K–€1.05M in modelled annual risk, unpriced and invisible until the numbers landed on paper. Reliability had quietly become the product.

Impact:

Modelled expected annual loss, quantified and phased out: €508K–€1.05M
Designed recovery time, from no tested restore: < 4 hrs

Read the full case study

Common questions

What executives ask before engaging.

How quickly can you assess the situation?+

The assessment phase is fixed at five business days. That is enough to review the codebase, delivery history, architecture decisions, team setup and vendor contract. You receive a written risk map and recovery recommendation at the end of day five — not a preliminary read, a decision-quality output.

Do you replace the existing team or vendor?+

Not automatically. The assessment will tell you whether the problem is the team, the structure around the team, the vendor contract, the architecture, or some combination. In many cases the team is capable and the problem is the operating model. We recommend replacement only when the evidence supports it — and in that case we can manage the transition directly.

We have already hired a project manager. Why do we need this?+

Project management controls timeline and communication. It does not diagnose architecture risk, hidden completion work, vendor misalignment or delivery-system failures. If the project is being managed but still slipping, the problem is not planning — it is in the system the plan runs on. That is what this assessment surfaces.

The vendor says they are 90% complete. How do we evaluate that?+

Percentage-complete reporting is almost always a measure of effort spent, not work remaining. The last 10% of a software project often contains the majority of the risk: integration, security review, deployment, performance, acceptance and operational readiness. We replace the percentage with a demonstrable-milestone view and a transparent remaining-risk range.

We have already spent a significant budget. Does that change the recommendation?+

Sunk cost is not a rescue justification. The assessment evaluates whether the project is worth the remaining investment, not whether you can recover what has been spent. In some cases the most commercially sound recommendation is a controlled stop or a scope reduction. We make that call if the evidence demands it.

How is this different from bringing in more developers?+

More developers add capacity. They do not diagnose why the existing capacity is not producing results. Adding people to a project with architectural problems, unclear ownership, or a broken delivery system often accelerates the failure. The assessment identifies the actual constraint before any execution decision is made.

Fixed-scope next step

Project Rescue Assessment

Five business days. A risk map, a completion picture, and a clear recommendation — rescue, rebuild, replace or stop. No retainer. No open-ended commitment.

The assessment covers