How long from contract signed to project delivered?
№ 099 · Days from sold to delivered
Definition
MetricCalendar days from contract signature to project delivery, split into kickoff lag (signature to start) and delivery duration (start to done)
Unitdays; cross-firm comparability via % of projects delivered on time
Histogram or scatter of contract signed-date to completion-date. Long tail means delivery bottlenecks. Build by joining contract sign-date with project completion in PM tool. Long delivery delays starve cash flow. Example: median 90 days, 90th percentile 240 days.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| on-time delivery 65% or below, with kickoff routinely slipping past four weeks because staffing lags sales | on-time delivery around 73-74% (73.8% in 2025, 73.4% in 2024); absolute day counts are scope-dependent and not published cross-firm | kickoff within 10 business days of signature and 80%+ of projects delivered on time (the 2021 industry high was 80.2%) |
Global professional services, SPI on-time delivery metric as the comparable proxy, 2024-2025 fiscal data; absolute sold-to-delivered day counts depend on engagement size (SPI's average project was $181k and 25.9 man-months of effort in 2021) and are not benchmarked across firms · No cross-firm dataset publishes signature-to-delivery calendar days, so the comparable benchmark is the on-time rate plus the firm's own kickoff-lag baseline. The 25.9 man-month figure is effort, not elapsed time, and is 2021 data, flagged as dated. PMI's 48% late figure is 2018 and spans all project types. RSW/US data on close times measures the sales cycle before signature, cited for context only.
Category split omitted: No two independent sources publish sold-to-delivered lead times for any service category; on-time rates are only published in aggregate by SPI.
When it looks bad
The dots drift up and to the right cohort after cohort: later-sold projects take longer to reach delivered and the spread widens, with the kickoff-lag component growing faster than delivery duration.
Median sold-to-delivered moved from 74 to 118 days across three quarters; 40% of projects now start more than a month after signature because staffing lags sales commitments.
What to do about it
- Split the metric into kickoff lag and delivery duration and manage them separately; kickoff lag is a pure process fix (staffing commitment at contract stage), while duration is a scoping question, and blending them hides which one is deteriorating.
- Require a named delivery team and start date before signature; SPI 2026 identifies the sales-to-delivery handoff as the point where pipeline fails to become delivered revenue.
- Standardize delivery with templated plans and a fixed methodology for repeated project types; SPI links standardization to on-time performance, and the industry gap to the 80.2% high is mostly execution variance.
- Cap concurrent projects per project manager and enforce WIP limits; starting everything immediately delivers nothing on time, and SPI tracks PM load precisely because overload shows up as late cohorts.
Sources
- Deltek (SPI Research data) On-time project delivery held at 73.8% in 2025, essentially flat from 73.4%, below the 76% five-year average and the 80.2% high of 2021; converting pipeline into delivered work named the core constraint deltek.com ↗
- Rocketlane (SPI Research data) SPI 2026: standardized delivery methodology and real-time visibility separate on-time firms; execution, not demand, is the growth lever rocketlane.com ↗
- SPI Research (co-published with Kantata) 2024 data: on-time delivery slipped to 73.4% with project overrun at 11.3%; late delivery flagged as a direct driver of margin and trust erosion get.kantata.com ↗
- Certinia (SPI Research data) 2021 SPI data (dated): average project revenue $181k with 25.9 man-months of effort; effort figure shows why absolute delivery-day benchmarks do not transfer across firms certinia.com ↗
- Project Management Institute 48% of projects finished late and 43% over budget (2018 data, dated, all project types); late delivery correlated with scope creep at 52% of projects pmi.org ↗
- RSW/US Sales-side context: 78% of professional services firms report deals taking up to six months to close in 2025, and work arriving in smaller chunks, which pressures firms to start projects before staffing is ready rswus.com ↗