Is It Procrastination, Or Merely Good Sense?

Sometimes, what might seem at first like procrastination in setting to work on a story is actually a recognized fault in the planning stage: you skipped over a dead spot in the outline, your plot has a hole, your character assumptions are missing the emotional conflicts that can bring people to life, your story structure is less a firm skeleton than a seeping blob.

At times like this, it can be too easy to plow ahead and hope for the story to work despite its deformities, but I've learned to trust my hunches. If the outline stinks like a semi-liquescent groundhog, how likely is the finished work to smell as good as pecan pie?