Fix · Stalled build

“The project's been two weeks away for six months.”

Nobody is lying to you. Each individual estimate was probably honest. What's missing is anyone counting what remains in one place.

What is actually going on

Stalled projects have a signature. The demo works if you click in a particular order. The last 20% has been the last 20% for a while. Progress gets reported in tickets closed rather than in things a person can do, and every fix quietly opens something else.

Underneath is usually a codebase where the hard decisions were postponed instead of made. Authentication half done, a data model fighting the feature it was built for, no tests, an environment nobody can rebuild from scratch. Each change costs more than the last, which is exactly why the finish line retreats at walking pace.

Whether to finish it or start over is not a call you can make from outside it, and not one the team that built it can make objectively.

What we do about it

We take the codebase over, tell you what is really left, and finish it.

We read it before we say anything

Run it, trace it, find out what actually works. You get an honest written read on what is salvageable, whether or not you carry on with us.
We tell you which route is shorter

Sometimes finishing wins. Sometimes rebuilding one layer beats untangling it. Rebuilding is the more expensive thing for us to recommend, so we don't recommend it by default.
Something works in the first cycle

A stalled project needs a pulse more than it needs a plan. Getting a build running in a real environment is the first thing we do.
Then it ships and we keep it

Taking a system over means owning it afterwards. It does not end with a handover to nobody.

Where we have done this

One build had failed for two years at a previous agency. It shipped in six months with us, and the company was acquired later.

See the case studies →

50+

Products shipped

5 years

Average client tenure

4.8

Rating on Clutch

$5,000

Retainers from, per month

Questions

What people ask next.

Are you going to tell us to throw it away?

Only if starting over genuinely gets you to a working product sooner. Often it doesn't.

Do we have to remove the current team first?

No, and often you shouldn't. We've worked alongside in-house teams and picked up from vendors who were already gone. What matters is who owns the decisions from here.

How long before we know where we stand?

Usually days rather than weeks, depending on the size of the codebase.

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