The Real Cost of Pushing Out Projects—and How To Avoid It

The sun peeks over the horizon, bathing your strawberry fields in warm, golden light. You’ve been up for hours, packing the sweetest, juiciest strawberries to sell at a local farmer’s market. And this isn’t just any ol’ market—top chefs and dedicated foodies come here to stock up on the best produce in the region. 

With everything loaded into your truck, you set off for the two-hour drive into town … but halfway there, traffic slows to a crawl. Unexpected roadwork has turned the highway into a parking lot. You’re stuck, inching along for what feels like forever.

When you finally get to the market, the prime crowds have already come and gone, their trucks loaded with your competitors’ goods. You’re left trying to sell your best produce to a thinning, less interested crowd. No matter how sweet those berries are, you can’t make up for the missed foot traffic.

That’s what happens when you push back a new product feature, delay adoption of new tech, or hold off scaling up teams. By the time you’re ready, your best opportunities have passed.

Large businesses might feel the financial hit of missing peak opportunities. For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), the impact can be much more severe. And bouncing back can be even harder.

Understanding peak demand

Many leaders think that delaying a new product launch by six months is no more harmful than pushing new revenue down the road by six months as well. This may be true for products with long life cycles, like chocolate bars.

But for products with shorter life cycles—like holiday candy canes—timing is everything. If you’re late to market, your competitors can grab all the attention and sales.

Every product has a peak demand. That’s the sweet spot where customer excitement and sales are at their highest. Missing that moment is like showing up late to the farmer’s market: demand is low and capturing customer attention is tougher.

The drop in demand is even more dramatic with technology products and services. Delays in launching or updating a product give competitors the chance to dominate the peak demand window and gain customer loyalty, while possibly damaging your own brand reputation. 

Executive consultant and author Henrico Dolfing illustrates the financial impact of entering the market on time and late in this chart: 

Delays impact SMBs more than larger businesses

Compared to large businesses, SMBs operate with tighter budgets, fewer resources, and little room for error. There's no budget to recover from missed opportunities.

Pushing out projects can mean losing revenue and market share. Plus you'll waste valuable resources. But if you get projects done on time, you can reap the rewards—like getting to market first and securing the leadership position.

Take GoPro, for example. While the camera and technology markets were already dominated by major players, this small business was one of the first companies to create a market for wearable action cameras. Although many companies had the means to corner this market before GoPro gained traction, and competitors have surfaced over the years, GoPro still dominates even against tech giants like Samsung.

GoPro can point to many reasons for its success. One is how the company consistently introduces new features and improvements, keeping them at the forefront of action camera technology. As important, they time marketing cycles with their new features. If their marketing had hyped the product launch, but the company missed its launch window or the product failed to deliver on its promises, the damage to the company’s brand reputation may have created insurmountable obstacles.

The reality is, business needs change. So not every project can—or should—remain on the table. Avoiding project delays starts with changing how you prioritize them.

Prioritizing projects using cost of delay

In product development, businesses need to account for cost of delay (CoD). CoD is the financial or business impact incurred when a project isn’t completed on time. 

Let’s say your privacy software isn’t updated by the deadline, for example. Part of your CoD may be fines incurred for being out of compliance, plus business lost when customers move to software they feel will be more reliable, as well as any increased cost in production (if for example you have to pay overtime to get back in compliance).

Understanding CoD helps you see the potential losses associated with delays. Determining the actual cost of delay involves a project’s value and urgency. Dolfing’s article on how to calculate CoD explains the process in detail; the general idea goes like this:

Determine a project’s value by the expected gains. They usually fall under these categories:

• Increased revenue (e.g., Releasing a new product feature will enable you to enter a new market)
• Protected revenue (e.g., Offering a custom feature will help you keep a large client)
• Avoided costs (e.g., Installing new equipment will reduce worker accidents and injuries)
• Positive impacts (e.g., Providing training programs will increase worker retention rates)

Determine a project’s urgency by how long the gains will last and the impact of being late. For example:

• How long will it take for competitors to launch something similar or better? 
• Will arriving first to market make it difficult for latecomers to enter the market?
• Will being the first to scale inhibit competitors from catching up?

Talent shortages further disrupt schedules

Knowing how to rank projects is only part of the challenge; another is figuring out who’s going to do the work. Over three-quarters of businesses are struggling to fill key roles. For project managers alone, experts predict that 25 million more people will need to be trained and hired by 2030.

Filling your talent gaps is as important as understanding how to rank projects by CoD. Without skilled people to handle critical tasks, many projects will struggle—or fail to happen at all. 

How leading companies keep projects moving forward

No company, big or small, can hire for every skill they need. And as more and more work is being projectized, hiring doesn’t always make sense. Why tie up budgets with a full-time employee when you only need a specific skill for a short time?

This is why leading companies have a modern take on who makes up their workforce. When teams don't have the skills required for a project, they fill in the gaps with freelance specialists. Employees see these flexible professionals as extensions of their team rather than as competition for limited payroll. Freelancers enable employees to take on bigger and more complex projects.

Project Management Institute (PMI) dubbed these successful companies "Front Runners." Nearly half of Front Runners use freelance project managers and specialists.

An Upwork study shows a similar practice with high-performing companies, called "Work Innovators." Most Work Innovators (92%) say they want to work with the best talent. They don’t get hung up on whether the best talent is an employee, freelancer, or consultant.

What about times when bringing in a few specialists isn’t enough? That's when these high-achieving companies hand entire projects to managed service providers (MSPs). MSPs offer IT and business support services on a contract basis.

Using an MSP is a strategic way to keep budgets under control, save time, and achieve results. It’s no wonder that a majority of Work Innovators (61%) leverage MSPs to help sustain business growth.

Take Keith Green, Chief Human Resources Officer at Mobileum, for example. He was tasked with streamlining processes and systems while integrating operations from several global acquisitions. “We had employees across 52 countries, operations in 25 countries, all with their own policies and procedures,” said Green. “You can imagine how complicated it was.”

Green envisioned a self-service HR hub that unified Mobilieum's employees and processes worldwide. But he didn't have the budget to hire all the specialists needed for such a massive project. So, he turned to Upwork Managed Services.

Managed Services handled everything from planning the project and hiring specialists to delivering milestones on time. Green reported toward the end of the project, “We're 95% through the effort and it's been a big success.” See Mobileum’s full case study.

Upwork Managed Services gets the job done—guaranteed

Reprioritizing and shelving projects to meet changing business needs is strategic. But pushing pause on critical projects because your teams lack the time, money, or talent? That’s completely avoidable.

Upwork Managed Services is available to Enterprise clients. With access to more than 10,000 skills, you can move forward with any initiative such as:

• Developing remote training programs to attract and retain top talent
• Scaling global support teams to maintain service levels as workloads increase
• Automating repetitive tasks with AI to improve employee productivity and job satisfaction
• Creating and promoting content across digital channels to generate qualified leads
• Testing proof of concept to innovate faster with less risk

And here’s the best part: Upwork delivers guaranteed outcomes. Explore what’s possible with Upwork Managed Services.