Every organization I’ve worked in has had projects that were supposed to transform customer experience, unlock efficiency, or catapult the company into a new market, yet months or even years later, they’re still just limping along. The deadlines keep shifting, the benefits keep receding into the future, the budget keeps inflating, no one really believes the original business case anymore, but somehow the project survives.
These are zombie projects; not alive, not quite dead, but still consuming resources and attention, yet sadly, almost every portfolio has them.
The real puzzle is not why projects sometimes fail (as failure itself is not a bad thing, if anything, it’s actually a sign of an ambitious portfolio), but why organizations are so reluctant to kill them once they clearly have.
The psychology of keeping projects alive
The most obvious reason (at least if you wear the Economics hat that I do) is the sunk cost fallacy. Once you’ve poured millions of dollars and thousands of hours into an initiative, it feels irrational to walk away. However, the reality is that the money already spent is gone either way, and economics actually tells us the opposite: past investment should have no bearing on future decision-making, as the only thing that matters is whether additional dollars will generate the returns promised. Yet time and again, organizations double down on bad bets.
Then comes career risk; ending a project can feel like a professional admission of failure, and no one wants to be the Executive whose name is attached to an initiative that got shelved. As ridiculous as it is, “finishing” something (even if it delivers less than planned) is perceived as safer than being the one who was smart enough to pull the plug and stop throwing away time and resources on a failing project. The corporate reward system rarely celebrates those who protect future value, instead favoring those who deliver something visible in the present.
There’s also the political dimension, as projects aren’t just financial entities; they’re political ones. They can represent a department’s influence, a senior leader’s legacy, or a vendor relationship someone fought hard to secure. Killing a project therefore doesn’t just end a piece of work, it can upset the balance of power, and so projects live on, not because they’re strategically sound, but because they’re politically protected.
Lastly, there’s a cultural aversion to “failure” as in many organizations the word carries moral weight (this can be particularly true depending on the country you're operating in / the culture of the company), so even the suggestion of stopping a project can be met with discomfort. Leaders instinctively switch to optimistic language (“we just need another quarter”, “let’s stabilize first”, “the benefits will ramp next year” etc) as hope replaces analysis.
In that context, it’s easy to see how projects that should have been closed months ago keep going, but psychology and politics only explain part of the story.
The blind spot: not realizing projects are failing
Perhaps a more uncomfortable truth is that many organizations don’t even realize a project has turned into a zombie. Most think they’re tracking performance, but what they’re really tracking is activity; milestones are ticked off, meetings are held, reports are written. All of this suggests momentum, but none of it proves that value is actually being created.
Few organizations compare realized ROI against what was promised in the original business case, and in many cases, they actually couldn’t even if they wanted to, because the data simply isn’t captured in a structured way. Benefits are often forecasted once, then forgotten, risk logs are filled out at the start, then rarely revisited, and assumptions that once underpinned the ROI calculation quietly decay as markets shift, costs rise, or adoption falters.
Meanwhile, reporting structures reward optimism; no one wants to tell the steering committee that things aren’t going well, so metrics are framed in the best possible light. “Green” statuses are maintained through, let’s call it “creative interpretation”, while even internal auditors can struggle to piece together the real picture because the information sits in disconnected spreadsheets and presentations.
By the time the alarm bells finally ring, the money is gone, and the opportunity to redirect resources has passed. This is the blind spot at the heart of most portfolios: the illusion of control created by outdated metrics. Leaders think they have visibility, but they’re looking through a distorted lens, namely one that tracks motion, not value.
It’s not that people (necessarily) want to hide the truth; it’s that the systems they use don’t make the truth easy to see.
The hidden cost of zombies
The thing is, zombie projects aren’t just a financial nuisance; they also corrode organizational focus as every underperforming initiative still requires admin (meetings, governance, management attention etc), every team member assigned to a doomed project is a skilled person who could be contributing elsewhere, and every dollar tied up in keeping a zombie limping along is a dollar not invested in things that actually matter like innovation, transformation, or cost optimization.
The worst part, though, is that opportunity costs are invisible; they may not appear on balance sheets, but they’re real, and compounding. Over time, portfolios become cluttered with low-yield projects that slow down decision-making, dilute strategic clarity, and exhaust the people who have the thankless (and largely pointless) task of maintaining them.
There’s also a psychological tax, as teams trapped in zombie projects know the truth long before leadership does. They sense that what they’re doing no longer makes sense, but the organization isn’t ready to hear it, which in turn erodes morale, trust, and confidence in leadership’s ability to make tough calls.
It’s not just the team members, though, as boards and investors see it too. When projects drag on indefinitely with no clear outcomes, confidence in governance starts to erode, and the organization looks indecisive.
Why killing projects should be normalized
What we’re faced with is a bit of a strange paradox: organizations fear that killing projects will make them look weak, when in fact, it’s a hallmark of strength, as ending a project shows that leadership can make rational, evidence-based decisions even when they’re uncomfortable, and proves that the business values agility over pride.
In fact, some of the most successful organizations in the world have learned to treat project termination as a strategic tool. Venture capital portfolios expect a mix of hits and misses; the key is to cut losses fast and double down where the data is strong. Internal portfolios should be managed with the same discipline.
When done well, project shutdowns:
💵 Free up capital for higher-return initiatives
🔍 Signal to employees that decisions are based on evidence, not politics
🎓 Reinforce a culture of honesty and learning
💪 Improve confidence from boards and investors who see governance in action
Ideally, killing projects would be reframed as making space; i.e. space for better bets, clearer focus, and stronger results.
Building the muscle of disciplined decision-making
Of course, normalizing project shutdowns takes work, as it requires changing both the mindset and the mechanics of governance. You can think of the ability to stop things as a muscle; it strengthens with deliberate use, so enjoyably, I'm now going to take on the role of Personal Trainer and dish out a few practical starting points:
✔ Structured review points
Too many projects drift because there’s no clear moment when someone is forced to ask, “Is this still worth it?”, so regular review points create those natural moments of realization. You can tie them to whatever works in your org (e.g. financial quarters, major delivery milestones, or benefit realization checkpoints), and at each stage, review the latest ROI projections against the original business case. If the forecasted benefits have collapsed or the costs have ballooned, treat that as a legitimate reason to re-evaluate continuation. This simple structure transforms post-launch governance from a formality into an active discipline of capital allocation.
💰 Value-focused reporting
Most project dashboards still focus on activity metrics, be it tasks completed, milestones met or funds spent; however, as we mentioned earlier, movement isn’t the same as progress. A project that is “90% complete” may still be 0% valuable if the benefits depend on adoption that hasn’t started yet. Value-focused reporting flips the conversation: what has been realized so far, and what evidence supports that?
👉 e.g. If a customer experience platform was meant to cut churn by 10%, is that visible yet in the data? If not, why not? This approach creates accountability for outcomes rather than effort and helps surface underperforming initiatives earlier.
🚩 Risk as a living factor
In many organizations, risk registers are written once and never revisited, but in reality, every project’s risk profile changes over time as new dependencies emerge, regulations evolve, and external conditions shift. If risk probabilities and impacts are updated regularly, leaders can calculate a risk-adjusted ROI that reflects the real state of play, not the optimistic forecast from the kick-off meeting.
👉 e.g. If a cloud migration project suddenly faces new compliance hurdles or vendor instability, its risk-adjusted ROI may drop below the threshold that justifies continuation. That should be a signal, not a surprise.
👏 Reward honesty
It’s easy to tell teams to “raise issues early,” but human nature means that few will do so if they know it will harm their careers. A culture of disciplined decision-making depends on leaders rewarding honesty, not optimism. When a team flags that a project won’t deliver what was promised and recommends winding it down, that decision should be celebrated as fiscal responsibility, not punished as defeatism. Some organizations even track “savings from stopped projects” as a KPI, recognizing that smart termination can save more value than some completed initiatives ever generate, with the goal being to make transparency psychologically safe.
🧐 Portfolio visibility
Good decisions depend on good visibility, yet in far too many organizations, portfolio data is scattered across spreadsheets and presentations, each telling a slightly different story. Building a single view of projects, costs, benefits, and realized ROI allows leaders to make portfolio decisions based on facts, not gut feel.
👉 e.g. If three projects are chasing similar benefits, a portfolio-level view can reveal duplication and help consolidate efforts. It’s much easier to make the tough call to stop something when you can see exactly what else it’s competing with, so portfolio transparency turns project shutdowns from isolated battles into coordinated strategy.
📖 Cultural storytelling
Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of discipline is narrative. If the only stories told internally are about launches and completions, people will mentally note that ending a project is shameful and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Leaders can change that by actively sharing the stories of projects that were stopped well; those where early exit saved millions or freed up capacity for higher-value work. When leaders publicly thank teams for identifying and closing a low-performing initiative, they redefine what “success” looks like, and over time, these stories shape a culture where pulling the plug is seen as foresight, not failure.
The modern discipline of evidence-led portfolio management
There’s a quiet shift happening in how leading organizations manage their investments, as instead of treating business cases as paperwork as they always traditionally have, they’re now treating them as living documents; continuously updated, reviewed, and compared against reality.
This shift allows them to spot underperforming initiatives early, long before they become zombies. It also allows them to model alternative scenarios, compare trade-offs, and reallocate resources with confidence. In other words, they’re replacing instinct and optimism with evidence and visibility.
That’s where modern tools like KangaROI are changing the equation; not by automating judgment, but by giving leaders the insight to make better ones. When you can see the trajectory of Real ROI of every initiative in real time, project termination stops being a political act and starts being a logical one.
Closing thought: no one can focus when surrounded by zombies
Organizations often believe their strength lies in launching more projects, but true strength lies in knowing when to stop. A portfolio full of zombie projects doesn’t demonstrate ambition; it demonstrates avoidance, so the best organizations don’t just chase opportunity, they prune relentlessly. They understand that every “no” protects the quality of their “yes.”
Killing projects is not weakness; it’s clarity, it’s stewardship, and it’s focus.
And the organizations that learn to do it with discipline will always outperform those that can’t bear to pull the plug.
So don't let the zombies win.
