Brain drain: Are Zombie Projects eating your team’s productivity alive?

Picture the scene: You’ve returned from a wonderful holiday break, invigorated to tackle ambitious projects, and then it hits you. Maybe it’s pinned to your Jira board, or taking up a tab in Confluence.

It’s that one project that won’t go away. Its status hasn’t updated in three weeks. The Slack channel for the project is silent. Everyone else knows that they’re never going to find the time or the energy to see it through, but the boss still considers it “active.” We call this a Zombie Project – and it’s just as scary as it sounds.

Atlassian, in partnership with Censuswide, recently surveyed 8,000 global office workers. What we found just might explain what’s been quietly draining the life out of modern work for years.

What is a Zombie Project?

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Zombie Projects aren’t just slow-moving; they’re at a standstill. Often, they’ve become calcified as more time-sensitive (or more exciting) projects have taken priority. But these projects were kicked off for a reason. Likely, they were meant to address a problem that the company still struggles with, so it’s difficult to just kill them outright.

It’s often impossible to ignore this snag around the holidays. Last year, Atlassian researchers found that December 17th is the most common drop-off date for projects, at which point punting things to the new year is preferable (We aptly dubbed it “World Circle Back Day”).

Here’s the rub: modern knowledge workers aren’t so sure they can jump back into projects with purpose and momentum – and Zombie Projects are often to blame. Almost half (44%) of workers came into 2026 weighed down by Zombie Projects, our research found, and over 90% say it’s causing issues.

At worst, Zombie Projects don’t just slow productivity; they drain the tank.

• 37% of workers said they feel stressed and overwhelmed by the clutter of undead work
• 32% of workers say it directly impacts their own productivity.
• 32% of teams worry Zombie Projects put them on a fast track to burnout
• 31% of teams say Zombie Projects gobble up valuable team resources

Amid today’s rapid AI acceleration, the stakes have never been higher.

Almost 9 in 10 executives say their organization needs to move more rapidly than ever just to keep pace, per Atlassian’s State of Teams 2025 report. Teams should be conserving their time and energy to make space for AI experimentation and implementation, not carrying along the dead weight of a project that won’t see the light of day.

Why Zombie Projects won’t die

Stalled-not-canceled projects are a brain drain, and nobody’s happy about them.

But if that’s the simple answer, why haven’t we just killed them? New year, clean slate? It’s actually more complicated than you’d expect, and it comes back to a basic lack of autonomy and alignment at most workplaces.

• More than 1 in 3 employees we surveyed said they fear that pulling the plug will result in negative perception, like a boss assuming a project failed to get off the ground or workers didn’t sufficiently rally around it.
• A similar share cited a decision gap, which is when the projects lacks a clear sense of who has authority to call it quits. If nobody owns the kill decision, the Zombie lives forever by default.
• Another third of workers are caught up in the “sunk cost” fallacy. They’re attached to the program – and the many months of effort that went into it – and don’t want to waste that effort. Better to leave it open-ended and hope the time will eventually be right to bring it back.

Momentum is also partly to blame; if it doesn’t require much effort to keep a project perpetually on ice, workers are more likely to keep it zombified than sign up for the hard work of bringing it back to life. And when that low-effort limbo coincides with a lack of clear focus, it’s even harder to make a clean call.

Often, Zombie Projects are a sign that teams are missing clear focus. These are the projects that don’t obviously contribute to team or organizational goals, so they keep getting nudged down the priority list. They never feel important enough to invest in but without a clear connection to strategy, nobody feels confident enough to say out loud, “This doesn’t fit where we’re going,”.

AI teammate? More like Zombie Hunter

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The strength of a company’s human-AI collaboration will determine its ability to meet the moment in the coming decades. A thoughtfully integrated AI teammate might be the perfect tool for clearing out the graveyard.

• 60% of global workers believe an AI teammate could guide the decision on whether to revive or retire a project. (That figure rose to 79% among workers in India, but hit a low of 44% in Australia.)

When we put aside the emotional “sunk cost” and the anxiety of “failing,” we clear a path for AI to provide the information it needs to make the call.

• 43% of workers want AI partners to act as master summarizers, filling teams in with full project context so they can decide if it’s worth a reboot.
• 37% of workers want AI to create realistic time estimates based on their actual availability and timelines. This is a crucial reality check in determining whether a deliverable is even feasible within the desired time frame.
• 35% of workers want a comprehensive summary of project insights. The right AI partner can extract action items from old email threads and Slack archives and draft quick, fresh replies.

AI teammates are a Swiss army knife every team can utilize – especially those bogged down by projects lingering in limbo. Often, it’s the unexciting work of “information hunting” and “context searching” and “silo-busting” that keeps us from moving forward. That’s why it’s such a relief that we can offload the boring bits to our AI partner.

I’m sticking to my prediction that human-AI collaboration will separate the high achievers from the folks who miss the moment. That’s why Zombie Projects are so crucial to tackle; they’re the ultimate enemy of collaboration. They suck up resources, they muddy the waters of accountability, and they prevent teams from aligning on the work that actually matters.

Fortune 500 companies waste 2.4 billion hours each year searching for information, our State of Teams 2025 report found. That’s more than a quarter of each workweek. Consider how much time could be saved with those hours back in your calendar. I’d bet that’s plenty to resurrect a zombie or two—or, if you’d rather, bury them for good.

Special thanks to Jane Thier for her contributions to this article.

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