Every January, HR leaders aim to streamline priorities and focus on what matters. By February, many are carrying the weight of projects that should have been buried months ago.
Atlassian’s recent survey of 8,000 global office workers found that 44% came into 2026 weighed down by what researchers call “zombie projects.” The software firm’s research identified these as initiatives that haven’t moved in weeks, lack clear ownership and drain resources without delivering results.
Zombie projects are stressing employees
Employees are feeling it, and more than a third of workers report feeling stressed by the clutter of stalled work. They say these hangers-on impact their productivity, and they worry these projects are accelerating burnout.
Most HR leaders can name three zombie projects before their coffee gets cold. The question is why organizations struggle to kill them even when everyone knows they should.
The pattern extends far beyond individual stalled projects. In a June 2024 survey, project management expert Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez found that only 8% of organizations conduct monthly project reviews, while 44% stop projects only occasionally and 7% never stop them at all.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, Nieto-Rodriguez argues that most organizations could cut 50% of their active projects without negative consequences. Yet leaders don’t, caught between the excitement of launching new work and the discomfort of admitting something should end.
What are ‘zombie project’ traps?
More than one in three employees surveyed by Atlassian said they fear pulling the plug will result in negative perception. That leads to institutional magical thinking, where declaring a project dead feels like failure, even when pretending it’s alive wastes more time and credibility.
A similar share of workers cited what Atlassian calls a “decision gap.” These are projects that lack a clear sense of who has the authority to call it quits. If nobody owns the decision, the default is inertia. However, this flies in the face of Nieto-Rodriguez’s thinking. “The first rule for thriving in this new reality is simple,” he writes. “Kill more projects.”
Another third of workers are caught in the classic fallacy: They’re attached to the months of effort already invested. Nieto-Rodriguez calls this the psychology that keeps zombie initiatives alive, the rationalization that “we’ve already spent too much to quit, and we’re almost there.”
In organizations, the fallacy compounds over time. One senior finance executive told Nieto-Rodriguez that annual portfolio reviews come too late. “Zombie projects keep running because nobody wants to be the one to stop them,” the executive said.
What it costs to keep zombies alive
Launching projects is fun, writes Nieto-Rodriguez. “Kickoffs generate energy and visibility. Meanwhile, killing projects feels quiet, awkward and politically charged.”
This may be hurting the bottom line in terms of wasted employee work. Fortune 500 companies waste 2.4 billion hours each year searching for information, according to Atlassian’s State of Teams research. Zombie projects amplify that waste, cluttering project boards and creating confusion about what work actually matters.
Nieto-Rodriguez argues that stopping projects isn’t about cutting headcount. It’s about sharpening focus and amplifying impact. The fix requires something many organizations struggle with: the willingness to admit when it’s time to let go.
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