HOW TO RECOGNISE A PROGRAMME ALREADY IN TROUBLE

A programme does not suddenly fail on the day it misses its cut-over deadline. It begins failing months earlier in subtle, behavioral shifts that are never captured on a standard steering pack.

If you want to know if a transformation is heading for a crisis, look for these six early warning signals:

1. The Sponsor Sends Delegates

When senior executives believe in a programme, they show up to steering committee meetings in person and make decisions. When they stop believing, they send deputies who lack financial mandate and decision authority. When SteerCo attendance degenerates into delegates taking notes, executive ownership has vanished.

2. Governance Focuses on Process Over Content

In a healthy programme, 80% of steering discussion is about trade-offs: "Should we drop Feature B to guarantee the November regulatory deadline?" In a dying programme, 80% of time is spent debating formatting, terminology, and governance procedures: "Is this item properly classified as an Issue or an Amber Risk?"

3. The Architecture Has No Named Owner

Ask three different technical leads: "Who has final veto power over the end-to-end architecture design?" If you receive three different committee names, or an answer like "It's shared consensus across enterprise architecture," you have no technical governance. Unowned architecture always ends in integration paralysis.

4. RAID Logs Become Garbage Dumps

Look at the programme risk register. If it is an unstructured 'laundry list' that contains 350 items and hasn't been culled in 6 months, nobody is managing risk. Furthermore, if the descriptions read passively ("Risk that vendor may be late") without named single-point owners and verifiable mitigation milestones, it is merely institutional CYA (covering yourself).

5. The Definition of "Done" Keeps Changing

When milestones slip, failing programmes quietly redefine what the milestone means. "Phase 1 Complete" originally meant deployed in production with real user transactions. As delays mount, it is redefined to mean "Code complete in staging," then "Unit tests signed off," and finally "Documentation ready for review." The milestone is declared Green, but nothing has actually been delivered.

6. Good People Start Leaving Quietly

Your best engineers and delivery leads always know the truth first. When high-performing practitioners begin transferring to other business units or submitting resignations, they are voting with their feet.

What to Do Next

If your programme exhibits three or more of these symptoms, polite incremental adjustments will not save it. You need an independent diagnostic, an honest reset of the baseline, and the courage to stop the clock before spending further capital.