Why Every Startup Has a Project That's Been Stuck for Months
Every startup has at least one. A project that's been "in progress" since last quarter. The one that gets brought up in meetings, nodded at, and then quietly buried under whatever's on fire today.
It's not because the idea was bad. It's not because nobody cares. It's because everyone is spending their day putting out fires and doing core work, and the important-but-not-urgent stuff just sits there. Leadership asks for it, then forgets it exists when the next emergency arises. Someone spends weeks pushing it forward, only to be told later they "wasted time." The project never officially dies. It just fades into awkward silence.
How to Tell If a Project Is Truly Stuck
You probably already know which one it is. But if you need confirmation:
Generally, nobody can name the next step, not the founder, not the engineer, not the contractor. It hasn't come up in more than two consecutive meetings, but no one has archived it either. "We'll revisit that next week" has become a running joke. And somewhere, the person who actually did the work is quietly bitter because their Lego tower got knocked over without warning.
Why It Keeps Happening
It is often a combination of a resource, visibility, and communication problem. If leadership and the team can't see a project's status at a glance, it doesn't exist in any meaningful way. And when priorities inevitably shift, because startups have to pivot. The lack of communication to the person or people doing the work is often forgotten.
The result? People stop volunteering for stretch projects. They stop putting in extra effort on anything that isn't explicitly on fire. You lose trust in small increments, and you don't notice until it's gone.
What Actually Helps
Preventing blocked projects is a lot like eating healthy; in theory, we know how to eat, but life gets in the way. The realities of startup life will make these tasks feel hard. It will also take practice and will never be perfect.
Make the invisible visible. Pick one tool you already use — Trello, Asana, a Google Sheet, whatever — and list every active project in a single view. Add three columns: owner, last update, and next action. Pin it where your team can see it. Review it for five minutes at least once per week.
Create protected time. Block one calendar slot per week for deep work on projects. Treat it like a customer outage: no Slack, no meetings, no "quick questions." If the slot gets bumped, reschedule it the same day. Don't delete it.
Archive without shame. When a project gets paused, say so out loud. Place the files in a folder with a one-page summary so anyone can retrieve them later. Thank the person who did the work. Use explicit language: "We're shifting focus based on new data. This is not your fault." Celebrate the learning, not just the launch.
Bringing in a fractional project manager can be highly beneficial. This is why corporations use project managers: they recognize the power they bring to moving projects forward. A project manager can energize the team and keep everyone on track without diverting significant time and effort from core staff.