Posts Tagged ‘failure’

When Did Failure Become Desirable?

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

I have been reading some books and blogs recently and I have come across a recurring theme of failure:

  • Fail fast
  • Fail often
  • Aim for failure
  • Fail in order to learn from your failure

Listening to some people at events recently it almost feels like people are aiming to fail! Almost like it is a badge of honour.

Don’t get me wrong when things go badly lessons can be learned, but I would much rather things went right. I think some people overlook that fact that you can learn a lot from your successes as well. Find the things that are working and do more of them.

If you aim to fail chances are you probably will. If you aim for success chances are you more likely to reach your target.

Try the success cycle instead

So I suggest a new formula, a success cycle:

  • Aim for success
  • Succeed often
  • Learn from your successes
  • Do more of the things that are working
  • Rinse and repeat

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Why Do Projects Fail?

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

Following on from my post yesterday, I was thinking about the main reasons a project might fail. I have a lot of friends in project management and it was interesting to get their opinions as well.

Here are the top responses we came up with:

  • Too much change
  • Benefits take too long to be realised
  • Poor funding
  • Untested assumptions
  • Poor requirements gathering
  • Senior sponsorship is weak or lacking altogether
  • No risk planning or analysis
  • Poor stakeholder analysis or management
  • Over emphasis on technology
  • Projects not focused on delivering benefits
  • Lack of appropriate skills in the project team

I am sure there are lots and lots of other ones, but these are the trends that we have seen.

What other big reasons make projects fail?

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No Excuses Only Results

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

I love making mistakes, failure means I have tried something new and I have learned something. So when you make mistakes or get it wrong, stand up and be counted, don’t make excuses.

If you make a mistake it should be celebrated, when I was at school there was a sign on the wall which read: “The person who makes no mistakes usually makes nothing at all.”, and that has really stayed with me.

As a CTO in a fast moving industry, if you are an early adopter of new technology, if you adopt or try new standards, you are absolutely going to make mistakes. However the flip side is, if you play it safe, you will always be playing catch up, and have no competitive edge.

Remember though if you make the same mistake twice then that it foolish, make sure you learn from your failures and change your approach.

Go out there and start failing!

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