The Value of "Failed" Projects

Question

There is no doubt in my mind that project failures can provide valuable lessons to be learned.

Sometimes we learn what do do or do better and sometimes we learn what not to do.

The question is...... Is it worth blogging about failed projects?

Who wants to duplicate a failure?

There are costs to blogging about a failure, both is terms of effort and potentially in terms of reputation.

For the blogger the lesson may already be learned, so blogging may not help.

There may be benefits to the blogger in that other members may provide valuable pointers or may show appreciation of the effort or the lesson.

Do you prefer to read about successful projects or failed projects? - assuming the narrator is the same in both cases.
Are you only interested if the project is successful?
Would you blog about a failure?
Do you only read about failures for entertainment value?

Sometimes, at least in my case, I'll try some hair-brained project just to see if I can make it work, knowing it has a low probability of success.

I'm not all that keen to blog about hair-brained projects, even if I learn something.

Sometimes I will do quite a bit of design work and put in a good effort, but the project stubbornly refuses to work.

I am not keen to blog about most of these either, since it kind of looks like I just gave up, although usually they just go on the back burner because there are more productive uses of time.

I am working on a bit of a doozy right now whose chances of working are getting slimmer by the millisecond. My immediate thought was... I'm not going to blog about this embarrassing piece of junk, but who knows, I might talk myself into it yet.

Do you have any thoughts on whether failed projects should be blogged?

What was your most memorable failure?

14rhb · Answer

Hi dougw , a good question... E14 blogs are a great place to keep project material allowing me access for reference from home, work or whilst away. Therefore successful projects are always handy in such situations. For my own failed projects there would still be value in publishing them. In the future I may be talking to someone and realise they have experience that could help - having the blog readily available, and bringing the blog up to discuss or just remind me where I had got to would be invaluable. Also what may appear to me as a complete shambles would often attract useful suggestion from E14 members as to a way to remedy or perhaps a better initial approach. Reading other people's published blogs on failures is the flipside - maybe I can help or see the main flaw in their approach and offer help . At the very least I hopefully won't make the same mistakes - so we all learn from them taking time and publishing those failures. A failed project may also still contain some useful snippets others may be able to extract and use in their own designs. And lastly, as mentioned in OP, some failures can be be quite funny to see and are often posted for that reason/with suitable comments/emoji to help separate them from a blog where the poster is clearly heartbroken at the failure !

genebren · Answer

Failure is always a relative thing. I have worked on projects that met all of my initial design requirements, which I would consider as a success. There have been projects that never really completed, mostly due to lack of time or because other more interesting things existed that took all of my attention. These are failures, but more a failure of my more time management that a failing of the project. And then there have been projects that failed due to poor or uninformed choices that I made early on in the design. These projects are that no matter how hard I try, I am unable to get to work. And these are the projects that I can learn the most from. By going back and analyzing the incorrect choices that I made, I can learn how not to repeat those same, or similar mistakes in future projects.

"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."

Winston Churchill

By blogging about our mistakes as well as out successes, we can share two different sides of the same problem. Both are great learning opportunities. Both examples can teach others how to improve their own design processes. Back in my younger years, I managed a team of software engineers in the development of automatic test equipment (ATE). One of the exercises that I required of my staff was to perform postmortems on all projects, big or small, and share their findings with the rest of the staff. This way we could all learn from our mistakes and successes. While it is difficult at times to admit to our mistakes, it is even more difficult to move forward when we ignore them.

kmikemoo · Answer

I felt that someone would have surely quoted Edison by now. "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." I also want to know about - and share - the things that didn't work. DAB is absolutely right in that we learn more from failure than success. I believe that students learn more from their wrong answers than the right ones - IF the correct answer is explained. Herein lies blogging about the "failures". I can also learn from one of the ways that didn't work. "This is what didn't go as planned and this is why I think that happened." It's valuable stuff. I might make the same assumptions that the author did - and wind up with the same results. 9,999 to go. Or I read of someone else's adventures and save myself a few thousand attempts. Great question, dougw .

Andrew J · Answer

I Would write about failed projects, after all they don’t fail immediately and the journey to that point can be interesting and inciteful. In some ways, it’s more interesting to read about the tribulations on the path to a successful project than it is to read purely about the finished, working article. As for hair-brained projects they could be really amusing to read about.

Jan Cumps · Answer

I write about them, unless there is absolutely nothing to learn or explain.

DAB · Answer

You learn more from failures than you do from a success. You should always do a post mortem on each project to assess each part of the build to identify those areas where you need to improve you skill set. DAB PS, Yes I was heavily involved with product improvement training. Everyone has room for improvement, even when doing home projects.

ntewinkel · Answer

I've written about failed or stalled projects in the past. I find it helpful to remind myself of what I've tried, in case I want to go back to it later. It also opens up the possibility of someone else spotting an obvious "oops" in my work and helping me get back on track. From the other side of things, I've found other people's posts about fails very helpful for myself to avoid running into the same problems - specifically I'm thinking of a recent hardware related post where that post/comment answered several questions about a product that were exactly what I had concerns about. So that likely saved me a fair bit of time and money. But yes, agreed... it can be a LOT of effort just to blog the details. Stay well, -Nico

BigG · Answer

Ah but a failure can be viewed on so many levels. For example, was the failure to achieve your project outcome a case of: couldn't finish within a defined period of time the predetermined development methodology did not work as intended a hardware failure (as in something broke) meant I could not complete a poor choice in hardware component meant that it would not work as intended the firmware logic too difficult to solve and deliver what I wanted firmware software too complex to work with real world did not mimic theory and sometimes it is not even clear what caused the failure. The trick is to turn a failure into an opportunity by turning the failure into a question(s) for the community to answer or to offer insight(s). I was taught in science that you start with a hypothesis and then you work to prove it and write about the results. I view an idea as the hypothesis... and your attempt to prototype a proof of concept the effort to prove that the idea works. Most of the time complexity is only resolved through deeper understanding. However, this only works if the project you're working on is not a secret / confidential... and there lies the rub... if it's open source then the community can help if they are interested otherwise you are pretty much on your own.

BigG · Answer

Indeed so, the journey is the most exciting and inspiring part especially if you see a project as having many iterations. It is only academics which mistakenly tries to make us try and solve a problem in the first attempt, and when we are then appraised by others to give us a grade this makes us very self critical on our own project performance.

dougw · Answer

Thanks for providing your perspectives. When I think about it, it seems to me I learn more from my mistakes than my successes, as you all stated above, but I learn more from other people's successes than their mistakes, if as kmikemoo indicates they are adequately explained.

The Value of "Failed" Projects

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