A project is paused indefinitely. How should it appear in the portfolio?
Unmanaged suspended initiativeRecord why it is paused, what obligations remain, and the conditions for restart or closure. A paused project still needs an owner and should not quietly reserve resources forever.
What to do now
- Confirm the pause decision and rationale
- Identify continuing costs and obligations
- Release unnecessary capacity
- Set a restart or termination review point
When to escalate
Escalate when
The pause creates unmanaged contractual or operational exposure.
Who decides
The portfolio decision authority
Example
A paused rollout retains a named owner for supplier commitments and a scheduled viability review.
Mistake to avoid
Leaving the project active with no dates and no accountable decision.
Prevent a repeat
Review whether active commitments fit available capacity and current priorities rather than just tracking project counts.
Suggested ApprovedFlow setup
- Projects
- Resources
- Documents
- Approvals
Use project and capacity records to support portfolio decisions, then record approved priorities and consequences explicitly. See the platform
Related cases
- How do we maintain a useful project inventory?Unreliable portfolio baseline
- The same dependency appears in many project plans. Who should own it?Shared dependency governance
- How can we measure benefits that appear months after delivery?Delayed benefit realization
- The proposed project duplicates work already underway. What should we do?Duplicate initiative intake