What is a Kill Point?
A kill point is a phase gate viewed from its sharpest angle: the pre-agreed moment where the project can be terminated if it no longer justifies itself. Same review, honest name — the option to stop is the entire reason the checkpoint exists.
Killing a project at a kill point is governance succeeding, not the team failing. The alternative — sunk-cost momentum — is how organizations ride dead business cases to full price.
Worked example
A pharma program reviews a drug candidate after Phase II trials: efficacy is real but below the threshold the market model requires. The kill point does its work — $40M spent, $260M not spent — and the team moves to a more promising molecule. The company's best financial decision that year was a project that stopped.