You don't need to understand Kubernetes to know your kitchen renovation is going sideways. You can tell from the way the builder stops making eye contact. From the third "slight change to the timeline" email in five weeks. From the fact that every time you visit the site, someone's ripping out something that was supposedly finished.
Digital projects are no different. And yet I keep meeting managing partners who've essentially handed the keys to their technology lead and said, "Let me know when it's done." Not because they're lazy or disengaged - because they genuinely believe they lack the technical knowledge to have an informed opinion about whether the project is healthy.
I'm not technical. I have to trust my IT lead to tell me whether the project is on track. That's what I pay them for.
I get it. And your IT lead probably is competent, and probably is telling you the truth. But project health isn't a technical assessment. At least, not entirely. The technology is the delivery team's domain - whether the API is properly configured, whether the deployment pipeline is sound, whether the content model is structured correctly. That's their job. The commercial outcomes? The governance quality? Whether the organisational conditions exist for the project to actually succeed? That's yours. And you don't need to understand a single line of code to assess any of it.
What I'm going to walk you through is a set of five indicators that any senior leader can evaluate independently, in about 20 minutes a month. No technical knowledge required. No jargon. Just the kind of questions you'd ask about any significant investment - because that's exactly what this is.
I've been involved in digital delivery for over two decades. We've delivered 170-plus projects at Distinction, and in that time I've watched a pattern repeat itself with depressing regularity: the projects that go wrong almost always show non-technical warning signs months before the technical problems surface. A decision that nobody will make. A demo that keeps getting postponed. A budget conversation that gets vaguer instead of clearer.
The five indicators below aren't things I invented in a strategy workshop. They're what I've learned to look for after sitting in enough steering committees where the status report said "green" and the project was quietly dying.
Visible progress. Can you see new things working - not designs, not wireframes, not plans, but actual things you can click on, read, or use - that didn't exist last month? This is the single most reliable proxy for genuine progress, and it requires zero technical knowledge to evaluate. You're not assessing code quality. You're asking whether the project has produced something tangible. If the team keeps showing you slide decks and mockups but never a working thing, that's a signal. A good delivery team should be able to demonstrate progress, not just describe it.
Decision velocity. Are the decisions the project needs being made at the pace it requires? This one cuts both ways, and I want to be honest about that. Sometimes the delivery team is slow to recommend or decide. But quite often - more often than most managing partners want to hear - the blocker is the client. It's you. Or your marketing director. Or your compliance team, who were brought in too late and are now reviewing something they should have seen eight weeks ago.
I worked with a mid-market professional services firm a couple of years back where the compliance team wasn't looped in until week ten of a twelve-week build. The project ground to a halt while they reviewed decisions that had already been made and built. Six weeks of rework, a blown budget, and a very uncomfortable board conversation. The delivery team had flagged the risk early. Nobody had acted on it. Decision velocity measures both sides of the relationship, which is exactly why it's worth tracking.
Communication quality. Are you hearing about problems before you notice them? A well-run project surfaces issues proactively. The delivery lead tells you the CRM integration is proving more complex than scoped, here's what they're doing about it, and here's what it means for the timeline. A poorly run project waits for you to ask, then minimises. If you're consistently the one discovering problems - through your own observation, through a colleague's complaint, through an invoice that doesn't match expectations - the communication quality on your project is broken.
Budget tracking. Is actual spend in line with the plan, and is the trend line moving toward or away from the approved total? This is financial management. Unambiguously your domain. You don't need to understand the technology to read a burn rate chart. You don't need to know what a headless CMS is to notice that the forecast to complete has increased by 15% since last month without anyone mentioning a scope change. If the financial picture is getting hazier rather than sharper as the project progresses, that's a problem - and it's the kind of problem you're specifically qualified to spot.
Team energy. Is the delivery team engaged, forward-looking, and treating your project as a priority? Or are they going through the motions? This is a human assessment, not a technical one. You've managed people for years. You know what enthusiasm looks like, and you know what "we're just trying to get through this" looks like. If the delivery lead who was animated and full of ideas in month one now sounds flat and defensive in month four, something has changed. Maybe the scope has ballooned. Maybe an internal dependency hasn't materialised. Maybe they've quietly moved their best people onto another client. Whatever the cause, you can sense it - and you should trust that instinct.
Each indicator has a corresponding question. Not a vague "how are things going?" - a specific question designed to produce a diagnostic answer.
For visible progress, ask: "Show me something that works today that didn't work last month." The answer should be a live demonstration. Not a screenshot in a slide deck. Not a description of what's been built. An actual working thing. If the team can't show you one, that tells you something important.
For decision velocity, ask: "What is the oldest unresolved decision on this project, and who is blocking it?" The answer should name a specific decision, a specific blocker, and a plan for resolution. If the answer is vague - "we're just waiting on a few things" - push harder. And be prepared for the answer to be you.
For communication quality, ask: "Tell me about the last problem the project encountered that you told me about before I asked." This one's revealing. If the delivery lead has to think for more than a few seconds, you have your answer. On a healthy project, this question is easy - there'll be a recent example ready to hand because proactive communication is just how the team operates. On an unhealthy one, the silence says everything.
For budget tracking, ask: "What is the current forecast to complete, and how does that compare to the approved budget?" On a well-governed project, the answer comes immediately and with confidence. A number, a comparison, and context for any variance. Hesitation, vagueness, or "I'll need to check and come back to you" are all amber flags.
For team energy, ask: "What are you most looking forward to delivering in the next four weeks?" I know this sounds a bit soft. But the answer is genuinely diagnostic. A team that's engaged will talk about specific things with something approaching enthusiasm. A team that's just executing a task list will give you something generic and flat. You'll feel the difference even if you can't quite put your finger on why.
The whole sequence takes about 20 minutes. Do it monthly - not in a formal steering committee, not in a packed review meeting, but in a direct conversation with whoever is leading the delivery. A coffee. A video call. Something with enough space for honest answers.
If you want the five indicators, the five questions, and the traffic-light assessment as a one-page monthly template, [download it here]. It's designed to be completed in 20 minutes after that conversation - score each indicator green, amber, or red, and you've got a project health snapshot you can share with your board or steering committee without needing to translate a single technical term.
One thing I want to be careful about: I'm not trying to create anxiety where it isn't warranted. A single amber indicator in a single month is not a crisis. It's a prompt for a conversation. Projects are messy. Decisions get stuck sometimes. Budgets flex. A team has a bad fortnight. That's normal.
What you're watching for is patterns.
Two or more amber indicators across two consecutive months - that's a pattern. Something systemic rather than incidental, and it warrants escalation. Bring it to the steering committee. I've written separately about how to run a steering committee that actually steers, and the short version is: this is exactly the kind of signal a steering committee exists to act on.
A red indicator in any single month - no visible progress at all, a budget forecast that's jumped significantly without an approved scope change, a team that is visibly disengaged - warrants an immediate conversation. Not an email. Not "let's discuss at the next review." A direct conversation about what's happening and whether the programme needs to pause for a reset.
The managing partner who can't find 20 minutes a month for a project they've invested £50,000 or more in is making a priority choice. I understand the demands on your time - genuinely, I do. But discovering in month nine that the project went off the rails in month three is always more expensive than 20 minutes of informed attention each month. Always.
There's a version of this where the managing partner reads this article, marches into the next project meeting, and starts interrogating the delivery team like they've been caught fiddling the expenses. That's not what I'm suggesting.
The framing matters. These questions work best when they come from curiosity rather than suspicion. "I want to understand where we are on X" lands completely differently from "I'm worried about X." One opens a conversation. The other triggers defensiveness.
Be specific about what you've observed. "I noticed that in the last two review sessions, there hasn't been a live demonstration of anything new" is useful feedback. "I don't feel like things are progressing" is too vague for anyone to act on.
Ask for the team's diagnosis before proposing solutions. "What do you think is causing the decision backlog, and what would help resolve it?" is infinitely more productive than "I think you need to bring in more resource." You're the sponsor, not the project manager. Your job is to create the conditions for success, not to direct the work.
What I've found over the years: a good delivery team - one that's doing its job properly and has nothing to hide - will actually welcome these questions. They want an engaged sponsor. They want someone who cares enough to check in, who makes decisions when asked, and who escalates blockers that are above the delivery team's pay grade. The team that finds these questions uncomfortable? That's useful information too.
There's a companion piece on managing an agency relationship without micromanaging that goes deeper on the posture here - where the line sits between informed oversight and interference. Worth reading alongside this one if you're conscious of getting the balance right.
The technology is the delivery team's domain. Whether the architecture is sound, whether the integration is clean, whether the deployment strategy is robust - those are questions for your CTO or your technology partner, and you should let them answer them.
But whether the project is producing visible results. Whether decisions are being made at the pace the investment demands. Whether you're being communicated with honestly. Whether the money is being spent in line with what was agreed. Whether the people doing the work still care about the outcome. Those are questions for you.
You don't need a technical qualification to assess any of them. You need 20 minutes, five questions, and the willingness to listen carefully to the answers.
If you want the five indicators, the five questions, and the traffic-light assessment as a one-page monthly template, [download it here]. Print it out, stick it in your notebook, and bring it to your next conversation with the delivery lead. It might be the most useful 20 minutes you spend this month.