Cooling-off policy: a template to pause your project

Table of Contents

• What a cooling off is
• Why you agree it in advance
• Triggers
• The process

  • 1. Signal
  • 2. Review, two days at most
  • 3. Decision
  • 4. During the pause
  • 5. Return
• Rules so the pause does not become permanent
• Template to copy
• Where it shows up in the portfolio

The worst meeting in which to decide whether a project should pause is the meeting where it already hurts. Someone defends the last two months of work, someone else brings a market fact, and the conversation becomes about people instead of the initiative. A cooling-off policy exists so that conversation is already written before you need it.

Cooling off, here, is not the legal withdrawal window on a purchase. It is a planned pause of a product initiative: the work freezes, the people are reassigned, and a date is set to decide whether it comes back or it is cancelled.

This page is the template. Copy it, fill the fields in brackets with the team and with leadership, and publish it where everyone can see it, in the wiki or in the repo. On the product evolution map, this pause is the white zone. Without it, whatever is "on pause" sits for years consuming maintenance while nobody decides.

What a cooling off is

A cooling off is a pause of [X] weeks in the execution of an initiative. During that period four things happen, and the four belong together:

• The team does not work on the initiative.
• The people and the budget move to other work.
• What was learned up to that day is written down.
• Pausing brings no penalty and no judgment on the person who proposed it.

If the return date is missing, it is not a pause. It is a drawer. If the reassignment is missing, the team keeps working on the initiative "just a little" and the policy did not happen.

Why you agree it in advance

You fill in the document when no specific initiative is on the table. In that session you close three things that, later, in the heat of a fight, everyone reads in their own favor:

• What counts as a signal. A competitor, a discovery that contradicts the hypothesis, a block with no date, a budget change, or an exhausted team. If it is not on the list, it does not trigger the pause.
• Who can open it. If only leadership can pause, the team waits too long. If anyone can cancel, the portfolio comes apart on its own.
• What the cap is. Maximum weeks, how many times the same initiative can enter, and what share of active work can be paused at once.

The numbers in the template — two pauses at most, and no more than 30% of active initiatives — are a starting point to cross out and replace. The mistake is leaving the bracket empty.

Triggers

Trigger	Signal	Who can activate it?
Market signals	A competitor shipped something similar and the reception was better than the team expected	PM
Invalid discovery	Interviews contradict the main hypothesis	PM and design
Technical block	An external dependency is unavailable and has no date	Tech lead
Priority change	The business moves the budget to another initiative	Leadership
Team fatigue	The team has been in crunch for more than three weeks	Any team member

Fatigue is not a wildcard for dropping uncomfortable work. It applies when crunch has already passed three weeks. Like the rest, it is written in the channel and goes through the review. It does not jump straight to the pause.

The process

1. Signal

Someone sees that the initiative should pause and writes it in the #cooling-off channel: what happened, which fact supports it, and which initiative it affects. Without that message there is no process, only a hallway comment.

2. Review, two days at most

The PM and the tech lead answer four questions:

1. Is the signal real, or is it the noise of a bad week?
2. How much has been invested so far?
3. How far is the next milestone?
4. What did we learn that we did not know at the start?

Two days is the cap so the review does not become another way of not deciding. If a fact is missing, it is requested inside that window. A one-month investigation does not open.

3. Decision

Outcome	Action
Continue	Write down why the signal does not justify a pause
Cooling off	The pause starts for [N] weeks
Cancel	The initiative is archived. This is not a cooling off. It is a close

Cancelling and pausing are not polite synonyms. Cancelling removes the topic from the portfolio. Pausing leaves it in the white zone, with a date.

4. During the pause

• The team works on other initiatives.
• Each week, the PM checks whether the condition that triggered the cooling off has changed.
• What was learned goes into archive/ in the Spec Kit, or into whatever equivalent the team already uses.
• There is no status meeting for the paused initiative. A weekly meeting about "how the paused thing is going" is still working on it.

5. Return

When the period ends, the PM brings a one-page brief: resume, extend the pause, or cancel. The team decides from that page. Extending is valid only if the policy has not used up the maximum number of pauses and someone writes down the new date.

Rules so the pause does not become permanent

• A cooling off cannot last more than [X] weeks without an explicit review.
• An initiative cannot enter cooling off more than [2] times. On the third, it is cancelled.
• The team cannot have more than [30]% of its active initiatives in cooling off at the same time.
• During the pause there are no status meetings for that initiative.

The 2 and the 30% are the values the template ships with. Change them in the cold session if the portfolio is two products or twenty. Do not change them on the day a specific initiative wants a third pause.

Template to copy

# Cooling-off policy

- Project: [Project or product name]
- Version: 1.0
- Date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
- Policy owner: [Name and role]

## Definition

A cooling off is a pause of [X] weeks. In that period the team does not work on the initiative, resources are reassigned, what was learned is documented, and pausing is not penalized.

## Triggers

- Market signals: the PM can activate them.
- Invalid discovery: the PM and design can activate them.
- Technical block with no date: the tech lead activates it.
- Budget change: leadership activates it.
- Crunch longer than three weeks: any team member can raise it.

## Process

1. The signal is written in #cooling-off.
2. The PM and the tech lead review it within two days.
3. The decision is continue, cooling off for [N] weeks, or cancel.
4. During the pause there is no status for that initiative. Learning goes to archive/.
5. When the period ends, a one-page brief decides: resume, extend, or cancel.

## Caps

- Maximum [X] weeks without an explicit review.
- Maximum [2] cooling offs per initiative. On the third, it is cancelled.
- Maximum [30]% of active initiatives paused at the same time.

Where it shows up in the portfolio

A policy with nowhere to look at it stays in a file nobody opens. On the evolution map, the initiative leaves MVP, PMF, or maturity and enters the white zone until the date of the brief. The move is the point: a note that has sat in white for two quarters, with no return decision and no cancellation, is a pause that already failed.

Agree the brackets in a session where there is no candidate project. The first time someone invokes the policy, the work is to apply what was written, not to renegotiate the caps.