In a 2025 survey reported by IT Pro, 82% of surveyed UK organizations said software deployments were delayed. The survey put the average delay at 3.8 months and estimated an average cost of £107,000 per organization per year. These are reported survey estimates, not audited losses or a universal measure of software delivery. The findings point to skills shortages and constrained automation capacity, but also to gaps between business and technology teams that can make schedules, priorities and the meaning of “on time” diverge.
What the deployment-delay figures do—and do not—show
The 82%, 3.8-month and £107,000 figures come from Gearset research reported by IT Pro in 2025. They describe respondents’ reported experiences and estimated costs; they do not establish that every UK business, deployment or software project faces the same delay or financial impact. The £107,000 figure is an average survey estimate, not an independently audited accounting of losses.
A separate Gearset study, its Salesforce-focused State of Salesforce DevOps 2025 report, surveyed 464 quality-controlled respondents, 65% of whom were Gearset users. Its findings concern Salesforce teams and should not be treated as a second measurement of the UK-wide deployment-delay rate. A different study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 2024 surveyed global business and technical C-suite executives across 25 industries about internal software development, principally custom applications. It excluded large ERP implementations and cloud migrations. The studies have different samples and scopes, so their percentages should not be combined.
Why deployments get held up
Skills shortages leave less capacity for delivery work
In the Gearset research reported by IT Pro, 87% of IT teams said they had skills shortages. More than two-fifths of respondents said those shortages hindered their ability to implement or maintain automation tools. When teams lack the people or expertise to build and support reliable testing and release pipelines, deployment work can compete with other demands for limited capacity.
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That is consistent with, but does not prove, a direct cause of every delay in the survey. A deployment can also wait on unresolved requirements, approvals, testing, environments or dependencies outside the delivery team’s control.
Quality problems and manual processes consume time
Kerry Proksel, Senior Director of Engineering at National Debt Relief, told IT Pro: “If a developer spends more than 5% of their time on deployment, it’s often due to quality issues like slow or incomplete tests, poor code standards, unclear processes, or environment drift.” The percentage is Proksel’s rule of thumb, not a measured threshold established by the survey.
Slow or incomplete tests, unclear release procedures and differences between environments can all create rework or uncertainty. Manual pipeline work can add friction too, especially when staff shortages make it difficult to improve and maintain automation.
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Business and technology teams may not agree on what is late
The 2025 IT Pro report describes a marked perception gap: business leaders estimated that one in ten deployments were delayed and 40% were early, while team leaders said 52% were delayed and 2% were early. These are different respondent perceptions, not two objective counts of the same delivery calendar.
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The report also says 54% of business leaders blamed AI tool development for delays, while team leaders emphasized pipeline automation gaps and skills. That contrast does not establish AI development as the cause. It shows why organizations need a shared definition of a delayed deployment and measures that both business and delivery teams can see.
Project plans can be misaligned or unrealistic
BCG’s 2024 survey found that nearly half of respondents said more than 30% of their organizations’ technology development projects suffered delays or budget overruns. This is a separate global survey of internal software development, not a UK deployment statistic. BCG also reported no correlation between whether respondents said their IT teams used agile development and project success; 64% said their teams already used some form of agile. That finding is not evidence that agile fails in every project.
BCG’s findings point to the importance of involving technology leaders in strategy early, agreeing on business outcomes and technical requirements, and setting schedules and budgets against realistic capacity. A project can use an agile method and still struggle if its goals are unclear, its scope exceeds available resources or business and technology leaders are not aligned.
What businesses can do to reduce avoidable delays
The studies do not demonstrate that any single intervention guarantees faster delivery. They do suggest a practical way to diagnose the problem: establish a shared baseline, locate the bottlenecks, and adjust delivery plans to match business goals and team capacity.
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For Salesforce teams, Gearset frames delivery performance using four DORA-style measures: deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate and time to recover. These measures distinguish how often a team releases from how quickly it moves a change, how often a change causes trouble and how quickly it restores service. Businesses can track project timelines and budgets alongside those delivery measures, then define in advance what counts as a delay and which business outcome matters.
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Find the bottleneck in the release path
Review where work waits or repeats rather than assuming that the final release step is the only problem. Check whether testing is slow or incomplete, processes are unclear, environments drift, pipeline work remains manual, or the team lacks the skills and capacity to maintain automation. The aim is to identify a specific constraint that the organization can address, not to add tools without a clear need.
Bring business and technology leadership together early
In BCG’s survey, reported success rates were 154% higher when technology leaders were involved from the start in strategy development. This is a reported association, not proof that early involvement alone caused the difference. BCG also reported success rates nearly 25% higher when meaningful incentives covered business improvement, timelines and predefined technical requirements. Together, these findings support agreeing on outcomes, responsibilities and technical expectations before delivery is under way.
Use staged scope and early warnings
BCG reported success rates increasing by up to 16 percentage points when effective early-warning tracking mechanisms were in place. “Up to” matters: the reported result is not a guaranteed improvement for every project. Tracking schedule and budget risks early can give leaders a chance to revisit scope, resources or dependencies before a late-stage surprise. Delivering a narrow first version and expanding it in stages can also keep initial commitments closer to available capacity.
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Assess tools by the problem they solve
In Gearset’s Salesforce-focused 2025 survey, teams with the most consolidated toolset were five times more likely than teams with the largest number of tools to deploy in under an hour: 66% versus 12%. The result is an association in a vendor-produced survey, not proof that consolidating tools by itself makes deployments faster. For organizations already using Salesforce, it may be a reason to examine whether their toolchain is unnecessarily fragmented—not a basis for buying a platform without diagnosing the underlying issue.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to interpret the cost to a business
The reported average of £107,000 per organization per year is a survey estimate of the cost associated with deployment delays. It should not be used as a forecast for an individual business: the survey result does not establish that every organization incurred that amount, nor does the reported figure describe the same financial impact for every project.
For a business assessing its own exposure, the useful next step is to connect delays to its own records: planned versus actual release dates, project budgets, time spent waiting or reworking, and whether the intended business outcome was achieved. That turns a broad survey estimate into a company-specific view without treating it as a bill every organization will face.
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