Grief Counselling • Walk-ins Welcome 🕯️ Calm. Confidential. Slightly Agile.

The Five Stages of Grief

A gentle, supportive guide for those experiencing the emotional impact of delivery — from missed dependencies to “quick wins” that somehow take a quarter.

Welcome, you’re safe here.

Please take a seat. Breathe. Have some water. If you’re holding a steering pack, you can put it down.

We’ll move at your pace. When you’re ready, we’ll look at the plan together (gently).

Today’s session theme

“This isn’t a delay — it’s a timing refinement.”

📌 RAID 📈 Gantt 🧩 Dependencies 🧘 Acceptance
Stage 1

Denial

“This isn’t actually a delay. It’s just… a timing refinement.”

  • The RAID log is technically “light amber”.
  • The vendor said “we’re basically done”.
  • The dependency “shouldn’t really block us”.
  • Milestone renamed to Indicative v1 (non-binding).

Key behaviour: Updates the plan but not the narrative.

Stage 2

Anger

“WHY WAS THIS NOT IN THE ORIGINAL SCOPE?”

  • Discovers everyone has been “estimating” since Phase 0.
  • Deploys passive-aggressive clarifying questions in SteerCo.
  • Emails now include: non-trivial, material impact.
  • Develops a personal feud with the phrase “quick win”.

Key behaviour: Weaponises PowerPoint.

Stage 3

Bargaining

“Okay… what if we just… don’t do that bit?”

  • Invents Phase 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1-but-not-really.
  • Proposes a “temporary” manual workaround (it will outlive us all).
  • Asks if we can “temporarily” ignore security/data quality/reality.
  • Trades scope for time, time for quality, quality for sanity.

Key behaviour: Redefines MVP until it’s neither minimal nor viable.

Stage 4

Depression

“…right.”

  • Stares at the Gantt chart like it betrayed you personally.
  • Stops correcting people when they say the wrong system name.
  • Accepts the critical path is now everything.
  • Delivery dates become “directionally aligned to Q4-ish”.

Key behaviour: Camera off “due to bandwidth”.

Stage 5

Acceptance

“Fine. This is the programme now.”

  • Updates the plan properly.
  • Writes a calm status update that quietly ends arguments.
  • Builds governance to survive the chaos rather than eliminate it.
  • Mentors others with: “Ah yes, this happened on my last programme too.”

Key behaviour: Achieves zen-like detachment from deadlines.

Bonus

Stage 6: Retrospective Amnesia

“Overall, a successful delivery with some learnings.”

✅ Status: GREEN 🧾 Lessons: Filed 🔁 Cycle: Repeats
  • The deck says GREEN.
  • The “learnings” are politely admired, then ignored.
  • The same mistakes are booked into the next programme as “assumptions”.
  • You’re reassigned to something “strategic”.