Using Project Failure to Your Advantage

While project failure can be very disheartening and stressful, the best thing you can do is turn this experience into a positive one. It may seem like the end of the world, but if you can learn from your mistakes, it will make a huge difference to your career as a project manager from being a project management apprentice to going forward. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the lessons you should learn from project failure:

1. Never stop learning: 

It does not matter how many years of experience you have, you should never stop learning. There are always new techniques and technologies making an impact in the project management industry. Moreover, new encounters always bring about new lessons. Make sure you create a learning culture within your team. Encourage team members to review their work and learn from it. You need to do the same yourself, for example, by taking advanced project management courses or learning other skills that you can apply to your job.

2. Be realistic with your objectives:

Did you set yourself up for failure? Often, project leaders make the mistake of overpromising. They try to keep the client satisfied by setting a quick deadline rather than an achievable and realistic one. When this happens, your team is destined to fail before the project even begins. The best thing you can learn from this is how to set realistic objectives and deadlines. Once you get this right, you will already be half way there to project success.

3. Strengthen your weakest links:

When a project fails, it is important to determine where you have gone wrong and address these weak links. After all, when everything is going swimmingly, it can be very difficult to determine whether your methodologies are really working for, and whether all of your team members are pulling their weight. However, when things start to go wrong, this will become a lot clearer. Use this to your advantage.

4. How is your next project going to be different:

This is the key question you need to ask yourself. How are you going to make your next project different from this one? This will help you to unlock creative solutions for the future that really will ensure you take your project team to the next level.

5. Take responsibility:

Last but not least, the most important tip of them all – take responsibility for what has happened. Don’t shift the blame. When things go right, the project manager gets most of the praise, so why should it be any different when things go wrong? Accepting responsibility will put you in the right frame of mind to learn what has happened. Moreover, your project team will respect you more for it.

Use the tips that have been mentioned above to turn a project failure into a lesson. By doing this, you can ensure that you do not repeat your mistakes again in the future. From taking responsibility to strengthening your weakest links, there are always some great lessons to be made.