Everyone trains to start and run programs. Almost nobody trains to stop one, which is strange, because killing the right program on time is one of the highest-value things a TPM does.
The hardest part is sunk cost. A program with two years and a big budget behind it builds its own gravity. People argue to continue because of what's been spent, which is exactly backwards. What's spent is gone either way. The only question is whether the next dollar and the next quarter are worth more here than somewhere else.
I look for a few signals. The original reason for the program no longer holds. The cost to finish keeps growing while the expected value keeps shrinking. The team has lost belief, which they'll show before they'll say. Any one of these is a yellow flag. Two or more and I start the conversation.
Killing well matters as much as the decision. Name why, capture what was learned, redeploy the people with a clear story so it reads as a smart reallocation and not a failure. Done right, a clean kill builds trust. It tells everyone that programs here are judged on value, not momentum.