Managers responsible for failed projects naturally tend to pass their failures in silence. They have the same tendency even when their project eventually succeeds, but has been marked by a failure on the part of the manager or the members of his team. However, how can we learn from our failures when we hide them? The Project Smart website recommends the following four-step procedure to work with project failures so that they do not happen again.
1. Collect information from all possible resources
Ask project team members, other project managers, project sponsor and your superiors as well as external stakeholders about the failure. The sooner you ask, the better.
2. Determine the cause of the failure
Based on the information you have gain, ask "what if". What would happen if the requirements had been correct from the very beginning? What would happen if we had limited the risks instead of accepting them?
3. Confirm the cause of the failure with others
Meet the participants once again and discuss the causes you can see. Make sure that you understand one another and that all of you can see what to avoid next time.
4. Share your experience
Try to share your experience with as many people as possible. Do not limit yourself only to the members of the project team. Search for ways to share the experience with other decision makers within the company and even beyond.
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