Decision Latency Is the Real Risk in Projects

**Most projects don’t fail because the plan was wrong.

They fail because critical decisions take too long.

Not because no one knows what needs to be done.
Not because the data is missing.
But because the decision keeps getting delayed, softened, or deferred.

A week becomes a sprint.
A sprint becomes a phase.
A phase becomes “we’ll deal with it later.”

On paper, the project is still moving.
In reality, momentum is leaking out through indecision.

This is what I mean by decision latency.

It’s the time between when a decision becomes necessary and when someone is willing to own it. That gap is where most project risk is created.

What makes it dangerous is that it usually looks reasonable.

“We just need one more data point.”
“Let’s see how it trends.”
“We’ll take that offline.”
“We’ll re-baseline next cycle.”

Each of those sounds sensible in isolation. Together, they quietly stall the project.

Tools don’t fix this.

Dashboards, frameworks, and AI can improve visibility and analysis, but they don’t reduce decision latency. In some cases, they make it worse by giving people more reasons to wait.

More data.
More scenarios.
More options.

But no decision.

I’ve written before about why AI struggles with real project work. This is a big part of it. AI can tell you what usually happens next. It can’t tell you which trade-off you’re prepared to live with when the information is incomplete and the pressure is real.

That choice isn’t analytical.
It’s accountable.

Decision latency also hides behind good governance.

Steering committees meet. Papers are circulated. Risks are noted. Actions are captured. And still, the core decision gets deferred because no one wants to be the one who makes it too early.

The longer that goes on, the fewer options remain. By the time the decision is forced, the project has already paid the price.

Experienced project managers learn to recognise this early. They stop asking, “Do we have enough information?” and start asking a harder question:

“What happens if we don’t decide now?”

That’s usually when the real risk becomes visible.

Projects don’t need perfect information.
They need timely decisions with clear ownership.

Everything else is support.