beyond data
    Stalled-Project Rescue

    A 2 to 3 week rescue engagement that gives you a kill, fix, or reset recommendation on a stalled AI or data project.

    Stalled-Project Rescue is a short, senior-led review of a data platform, AI pilot, or MLOps project that has been running for two or more quarters and still has not landed. In 2 to 3 weeks we return one of three recommendations: kill it, fix it, or reset it. The output is forward-looking, not a post-mortem.

    The Problem

    What usually breaks

    Six months in. Maybe nine. The spend is already north of half a million. Two internal sponsors have burnt political capital defending the timeline. The vendor is still confident. The board is not.

    The cost of a stalled AI or data project is rarely just the invoice. It is the months your best engineers spent on it instead of something else. It is the second project that never started because the first one has not finished. It is the credibility of the person who signed the business case, which now needs protecting before the next conversation can happen.

    We see this pattern across growing financial services, healthcare, government-adjacent agencies, and large family-owned manufacturers. The stalled AI project rescue work we do is almost never about blame. It is about a calm, outside set of eyes and a decision the organisation can defend.

    How It Works

    The engagement, step by step

    1. 1

      Scoping call with the sponsor to agree the artefacts, the interview list, and the question the board actually wants answered.

    2. 2

      Document review: business case, vendor SOW, architecture, code, data contracts, steering minutes, cost run-rate.

    3. 3

      Interviews with the project lead, engineers, vendor, sponsor, and two to three intended users. No large workshops.

    4. 4

      Diagnosis against six common failure modes. We name what is broken and why, not who broke it.

    5. 5

      Draft recommendation in week two: kill, fix, or reset. Tested with the sponsor before it goes wider.

    6. 6

      Final written recommendation with a 12 month forward economics view and, if relevant, a scoped first phase ready to execute.

    Capabilities

    The capabilities behind this

    AI and Data Strategy

    We work out which decisions are worth fixing first and what your data can actually support. You leave with a costed shortlist and a first build to start on.

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    Forward Deployed Engineers

    A senior engineer inside your team for a fixed engagement. They sit with your operators, build against your real data, and ship it.

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    AI Development

    AI agents, chat interfaces, and multi-agent systems, built end to end by the engineer who scoped them. Deployed, monitored, and handed over.

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    Outcomes

    What changes once this is in

    A decision, in 2 to 3 weeks

    One of kill, fix, or reset. Written. Defensible. Dated. Your board gets the answer. Your sponsor gets the language. Your project team gets to stop rehearsing the same status update.

    Sunk cost off the table

    The conversation moves from what has already been spent to what the next 12 months look like under each option. Forward economics replace defensive ones. The decision gets cheaper and cleaner to make.

    The sponsor protected

    The recommendation comes with a plan and the reasoning behind it. No scapegoating. The person who funded the original work keeps their credibility because the reset arrives with an answer, not an accusation.

    A shippable first phase, if it survives

    If the project is salvageable, you leave with a scoped first phase ready for AI Development or a Forward Deployed Engineer to execute the following quarter. Not a wish list. A statement of work.

    Failure modes

    What's usually broken

    We have run this rescue enough times to know the shapes. Most stalled projects fit one of six. The diagnosis is usually visible inside the first week.

    Typical failure modeWhat it looks likeWhat we do about it
    The use case was wrongThe model works. The forecast is accurate. Nobody uses the output because it does not change a decision anyone was going to make.Recommend kill. Redeploy the budget to a use case with a real decision attached.
    Data foundations missingA model or agent is built, but it cannot get clean, timely data in. Every pipeline is bespoke and half of them are red.Recommend fix, paired with a focused foundation build (typically an AgileData platform drop-in) before the use case is resumed.
    Ownership gapNo real internal sponsor. The project lead is a project manager without a mandate. Decisions take weeks because nobody owns them.Recommend pause until an accountable owner is named. No owner, no restart.
    Vendor dependencyYou are locked into a platform or model provider that cannot deliver what was sold. Roadmap slips are quarterly.Recommend reset with a platform swap. We scope the swap and the migration path.
    Scope sprawl40 use cases on the backlog. Zero shipped. Every steering committee adds two more.Recommend reset around a single use case, shipped end to end, before anything else is touched.
    Talent gapThe project team is all analysts and a project manager. No engineers. The code is running in a notebook on someone's laptop.Recommend an embedded build team (Forward Deployed Engineers) as the fix path. Analysts stay for domain. Engineers ship.

    Blunt version: most stalled projects are not technology problems. They are scope, ownership, or capability problems dressed up as technology problems. The rescue names which one.

    In Your Business

    How this lands inside your operation

    The engagement runs quietly. A senior consultant reads every artefact: the business case, the vendor SOW, the architecture, the code, the data contracts, the steering committee minutes. They speak with the project lead, the sponsor, the engineers, the vendor, and two or three of the intended users. No workshops with 30 people. No all-hands re-discovery.

    By week two you have a draft recommendation in one of three shapes. Kill: the use case does not deserve more money, here is what to redeploy. Fix: the project is worth finishing, here is the shortest credible path. Reset: something structural is wrong, here is the narrower scope or the platform swap that makes it shippable. By week three the final document is signed off and the sponsor has the language they need for the board.

    This is for you if…

    • A CIO or CTO whose AI or data project is two or more quarters in and still has not shipped.
    • A project sponsor who needs an outside, senior recommendation before the next board meeting.
    • An executive team that knows the conversation has become about sunk cost and wants to reset it.
    • An organisation willing to act on a kill recommendation if that is what the evidence supports.

    This probably isn't the right fit if…

    • Teams looking for someone to validate a decision they have already made.
    • Projects less than a quarter old. Give them another sprint before you review them.
    • Organisations unwilling to have an honest conversation with the original vendor.
    Common Questions

    Frequently asked

    Let's talk about Stalled-Project Rescue.

    30-minute call, no slides, no obligation. We'll tell you plainly whether this is the right fit for what you're trying to do.

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