The Subway That Never Carried a Passenger
Imagine pouring over $180 million, thousands of hours, and decades of effort into a major initiative, only to never see it used.
That’s not just a metaphor. It’s the true story of the Cincinnati Subway, one of America’s most ambitious infrastructure projects that was never completed. Still empty and unused, the tunnels now serve only as a costly reminder of what could have been. It’s a cautionary tale, and one that hits especially hard in today’s climate, when every dollar and developer hour counts.
In a recent webinar, Alan Manuel, GVP, Product Management at Planview, and Maik Hassel, VP, Product Management at Planview, compared this story to the crisis happening inside software organizations right now: the mounting cost of abandoned, outdated, or never-used work. In an economy where efficiency is a matter of survival, the price of waste has never been higher.
Wasted Work Hurts the Most During Uncertain Times
Let this sink in: only 25% of development work today delivers meaningful strategic value. That means three-quarters of what teams build may never drive results, serve customers, or advance the business.
This isn’t about productivity. Teams are working hard. But lack of visibility, shifting priorities, and broken processes mean that good work often ends up buried in silos or lost in backlogs.
And the cost? It’s not just technical debt—it’s financial waste. Organizations sink valuable time, labor, and resources into work that never delivers outcomes. Initiatives that could move the needle get delayed, while teams burn out grinding on features that never see the light of day. Morale drops, momentum stalls, and during leaner times, this kind of inefficiency can quietly derail even the most resilient organizations.
Why Work Gets Stuck—and What to Do About It
When work stalls, it’s rarely because teams aren’t working hard enough. In fact, most teams are running at full speed. The problem lies in the system: when teams don’t have visibility into where their efforts are going or which work actually matters, focus fractures—and waste multiplies.
One of the biggest culprits is constant reprioritization. Urgent requests and last-minute changes pull focus away from strategic initiatives. Teams end up in a reactive loop, patching fires instead of building toward long-term outcomes.
Then there’s aging work—those tickets and features that quietly sit in backlogs, losing relevance as time passes. No one’s officially killed them, but no one’s actively working on them either. They clog the system and create false signals about progress and capacity.
Team overload is another hidden blocker. When everything is high priority, nothing truly gets prioritized. Developers bounce between tasks, trying to stay afloat, without a clear sense of where progress is stuck or why certain items aren’t moving.
And finally, tool fragmentation makes everything worse. Different teams use different systems, and without a unified view, leaders and contributors alike are left guessing. This results in data silos, broken communication, and delays that could have been avoided with the right insight.
Without a way to see across the entire delivery pipeline, work gets stuck in the shadows. Waste piles up quietly until the costs become too big to ignore. To break this cycle, teams need real-time visibility into where work stands, what’s slowing it down, and how to shift energy toward what matters most. It’s not about working harder—it’s about working smarter, with systems that support clarity and focus.
The Need for Visibility Over Complexity
The good news is that solving this problem doesn’t require revamping your entire delivery process or adopting yet another heavyweight framework. In fact, the solution isn’t about doing more—it’s about seeing more.
When teams have clear, real-time visibility into how work is flowing (or where it’s getting stuck), they can shift from firefighting to forward-planning. You don’t need months of change management or complex new methodologies to get there. What you need is clarity—to spot when work is aging out, silently stalled, or drifting out of alignment before it becomes a sunk cost.
That clarity comes from a few key capabilities:
- Simple, intuitive visualizations that highlight aged work, abandoned efforts, and backlog bloat—without requiring hours of manual reporting.
- Outcome-focused metrics that tie delivery work to business goals, so teams can prioritize the initiatives that truly move the needle.
- AI-assisted insights that surface hidden blockers, systemic overload, and patterns of inefficiency that humans alone might miss.
The result? Even teams operating under tight timelines and limited resources can make smarter decisions, faster. Leaders gain a shared view of progress, priorities, and risk. Developers get clarity on where their efforts are most valuable. And everyone works from the same source of truth without having to implement another tool or add more friction to their day-to-day.
In a climate where complexity can kill momentum, visibility is your biggest advantage.
Start Seeing Impact in a Day
In uncertain times, inaction is often costlier than taking the first step. Inefficiencies build fast, but fixing them doesn’t have to be complicated.
Most teams already have the data—they just need clarity. With the right visibility, it becomes easier to surface aging work, overloaded teams, and hidden blockers without overhauling your process or adding complexity.
That’s where Planview Hub comes in. With our software toolchain integration solution, teams can start seeing actionable insights in under a day, even with messy or incomplete data. With seamless integration across 60+ tools and a 10-day no-cost evaluation, it’s easy to explore the impact before making a commitment. Watch this on-demand demo to see Planview Hub in action.
Don’t Let Your Work Become a Subway to Nowhere
The Cincinnati Subway remains a powerful symbol of what happens when bold initiatives never reach the finish line. In software development, the same story plays out every day. Work gets started but not finished. Value gets planned but not delivered. And over time, the hidden cost of inaction adds up.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Discover how forward-thinking organizations are breaking this cycle, using toolchain integration technologies to surface hidden inefficiencies, refocus their efforts, and deliver work that truly moves the needle.
