When projects go sideways

The early-warning flags (both directions)

Projects rarely go sideways suddenly, they slide. The flags on the client side: feedback arriving in drips instead of passes, decisions that keep moving, the scope quietly growing in conversation but never in writing. On the developer side: demos slipping, "almost done" repeating across weeks, or invoices meeting silence. The published rule that catches all of it: name the slide early, in writing, without blame. A two-line note, "timeline is slipping against the scope; here is why; here are the options", sent the week it becomes visible has saved more projects than any contract clause. The working method asks this of clients too; it is symmetric on purpose.

The path, step by step

Step 1, the direct talk. A call or meeting where both sides state their position plainly. Most disagreements die here: they were miscommunications about scope, timing, or who was doing what, and the written scope is the referee. Step 2, the written change note. Whatever was agreed gets captured as a one-paragraph change note (what changes, what it costs, what it moves), appended to the scope. Verbal agreements do not exist in projects; only written ones do. Step 3, structured reset. If the relationship itself is strained, a reset meeting re-baselines: what remains, what it costs, new milestones. Both sides re-commit or decide not to, decided deliberately rather than by drift. Step 4, mediation before lawyers. A neutral third party reads the scope, the change notes, and the correspondence. The documented trail from steps 1–2 makes this fast. Lawyers are the last resort, and the contract names the venue before it is ever needed.

The exit, how this practice ends an engagement

Sometimes the right answer is stopping. The payments & terms define it: work completed is invoiced to date, a kill fee covers the disruption, and everything the client owns, domains, hosting, repositories in their name, transfers immediately with the handover pack, regardless of the disagreement. No hostage assets, no spite lockouts: the client's property is the client's property, full stop. The same courtesy is expected in return, access and payments flowing per the schedule during wind-down.

What this page is really for

Reassurance, mostly. You are not just buying code, you are buying a defined way through disagreement. The developers you must vet hardest are the ones who promise projects never go wrong; the ones worth hiring publish what happens when they do. Every clause referenced here lives in the contract guide and the payments & terms page, read both before signing with anyone, including this desk.