A few weeks ago an agency owner posted something in a community I’m part of, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
The site was built and delivered. The client was asked to test it and sign it off. Then asked again. And again. Weeks went by. Nothing. Then the client rang, stressed, because a big event was coming up and the site still wasn’t live.
Every agency owner who read that post felt it in their stomach. Because we’ve all dealt with stalled projects like that. And somewhere in that phone call, it starts to feel like your fault.
It wasn’t. The work was done. The asking happened, more than once. What nobody had was a clock on the waiting.
It was never the work
There’s a fear running through every agency group I’m in right now. You can see it in the threads with the most reactions. The one that keeps coming up is quieter than you’d expect: “one day my clients won’t need me at all”.
I understand where it comes from. Clients can build a page with an AI tool over a weekend now and some of them have.
But look at that story again. That client didn’t need a better website. They had a great one. What went wrong was that a project sat in a stage for weeks and nobody saw it sitting there. Not the agency, not the client. What frayed the relationship was the silence.
That’s the thing clients actually pay an agency for, even when the invoice says “website”. Somebody watching. Somebody who notices the project has gone quiet and does something about it before it becomes a problem.
And that’s exactly what disappears first when you’re busy. Because when you’re the one doing the work, watching everything else is what gives.
A clock on every stage: stopping stalled projects
So this release, the new Boards in Atarim are built around one idea: stalled projects should make themselves known.
You lay out your delivery pipeline the way you actually run it. Onboarding, build, waiting on client, live, whatever your stages are. Every project, page and task can sit on a board. And any column can carry a countdown. Three days, a week, two weeks, working days only if you like.
Track progress at whichever level works for each client, whether that’s the whole project, a single page, or the tasks inside it. Every board also comes with a Backlog rail for work that isn’t placed yet and Undo on every move.
Put seven working days on “Waiting on client”, and every card in that column shows how long it’s been there. On day eight, the quiet project is in front of you. You send the friendly nudge before the client has even noticed time passing. The phone call never happens.
It’s a small thing on screen. It changes who notices first.
Deposits and withdrawals
I’ve always said that I like to think about client relationships like a bank account.
When something breaks, or when you want a yes on a new project, you’re making a withdrawal. You need trust in the account to cover it.
The deposits are always things the client isn’t asking for, but would greatly appreciate:
- The report that turns up before it’s chased.
- The “hey, I noticed this” message.
- The check-in on day eight.
Deposits don’t pay off that day, so they’re the first thing a busy agency drops. There are only so many hours, and the deposits never feel urgent until the withdrawal arrives.
Most of what we’re building at Atarim is about making deposits happen without depending on you remembering:
- A board that flags stalled projects automatically.
- Workflows that run the routine checks for every client, and that you can now subscribe to so we keep them up to date for you.
- Specialists that remember how each client likes things done and say it back to you the next time it matters.
All of it exists so you can keep the relationship you already have.
The fear, answered
So, will clients one day not need you?
Some will try. The ones who think they bought a website will find out they can make one themselves. But the ones who understand what they actually bought, someone watching, someone who notices first, those clients don’t leave. They can’t get that from a weekend with an AI tool.
Your value was never the doing. It was always the noticing. The job now is making sure nothing slips past you when you’re busy, and that’s a problem we can solve together.
Nothing you or your clients put into Atarim is used to train AI models. Not ours, not our providers’. You can read exactly how in our Platform privacy notice and DPA.
Everything else that shipped in 5.1.3, including self-updating workflow templates and a long list of fixes, is in the full changelog.
Now go and build your pipeline. Put a clock on the stage where things go quiet, and keep stalled projects from hurting client relationships. You already know which column it is. 🤘
Vito
