How Halden cut late launches in half

Halden shipped four products a year, and three of them moved. Nobody on the team was slow. They just heard the news late.

The starting point

Halden's plans lived in a shared spreadsheet that one programme manager kept current by hand. Delays reached it when somebody remembered to say so, which was often three weeks after they began.

Every launch ended in the same way: a hard fortnight of overtime, a trimmed scope and a quiet agreement to plan better next time.

What they changed

They did not change their process. Tuna connected to the tools the team already used, and the leads agreed to read the forecast for five minutes each morning.

After six weeks on Tuna, slips showed up on a Tuesday, while they were still two-hour fixes. A test window moved by a day. A supplier review came forward. None of it needed escalating.

Two quarters later

Late launches had dropped by half, with the same team and the same tools. The bigger change was harder to chart: the last fortnight before launch became ordinary.

Their programme manager now spends Fridays on supplier risk instead of the spreadsheet, and the next two launches are already planned with room to spare.