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Confidentiality Note: To comply with non-disclosure agreements and government classification standards, certain project details have been generalized or abstracted to ensure security and protection of sensitive information.
The Situation
The Situation
I was assigned to 'fix' a project that had been stagnant for two years. It was consuming an estimated $1.2M in annual funding, occupying a full team, and had no clear path to mission impact.
What I Did
What I Did
Rather than accept the premise that this project could be saved with enough effort, I assembled a three-week discovery task force with a deliberate composition: I invited the project's biggest internal skeptics alongside its defenders, and grounded the work in user interviews and a structured competitive and gap analysis.
The user interviews made the core problem undeniable: the market had moved on. The use case the product was built for no longer existed in the form the team had assumed. I documented the findings in a formal 'Sunset Memo' — a strategic recommendation to the steering committee to decommission the project and redeploy the team to higher-priority initiatives. Critically, the memo included a 30-day transition plan ensuring 100% of the team had confirmed placement before the wind-down began.
The Outcome
The Outcome
$1M+
Projected waste avoided
100%
Team placed within 30 days
3 weeks
Discovery task force
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