You’re an engineering manager and your project has failed. How can you recover from this?

After reviewing numerous discussions on this topic, it's clear that determining the success or failure of a project isn't solely the responsibility of the engineering manager. Stakeholders and project members also play crucial roles in this assessment. It's important for all parties involved to reach a consensus on whether the insights gained throughout the project alter its overall outcome. Additionally, a thorough evaluation is necessary to ascertain the achievement of any project objectives. The effect of the project on the organization, along with its partners and customers, must also be considered, especially in light of the resources invested.

Acknowledgement is very important. The early we acknowledge it the better recovery strategy can be planned. In my experience, failure to meet the goals should be communicated early, this can only come with better visibility and clarity, planning and defining the project in a way that failure can be tracked early is the key to manage the risk involved with it for all stake holders, involving the team early and detailing out the path to the finish early on surfaces the risks and expectation, this early team work is cheaper than misunderstanding between teams later. It's the leader's job to get all clarity and risks on table, as my previous organization put it very nicely fail early, fail fast.

Ask yourself whether the word “failed” or “failure” - in its traditional sense - is really the correct word to describe it. Chances are, it isn’t. Projects that FAIL are those that leave you, the team, and the company, in the exact same place as you were when you started. Are you in the same place you started? Did you learn anything? Did you take anything away that you can use elsewhere? Did this project make you realize this particular area is not as lucrative as we thought? Did this project prove that this idea really doesn’t work? If nothing else, did the project pay someone’s salary, or contribute to company overhead funds? If the answer to any of those is “yes”, it’s not a failure. Stopped projects are not failed projects.

Every failure will bring lots of experience which is the biggest asset for the next project. Failure of the project could have been due to several reasons, but finding your contribution to the failure is very important. This perticular knowlelde and realisation of the fact will make a person better and help to demlonstrate better results in the next project.

There are many variables and contributing factors that can lead to the failure of a project. Firstly, if the project is delivered under your supervision or direction, you must take full responsibility rather than shifting blame onto the project manager. To address this issue, it's crucial to arrange a root cause analysis meeting. During this meeting, take a helicopter view of the project to understand all aspects of its performance. From there, develop a comprehensive plan to reset the project team, ensuring clarity in scope, cost, and schedule monitoring, management, and reporting. By following good project management processes will help to set the project on a path to success.

In order to reach the root cause, we can use the '5 why method' to narrow down each possible cause. The following steps can help in identifying and documenting the root cause: 1. Retrospective reports in collaboration with all key stakeholders. 2. Analysis workshops to get different perspectives to each piece of the puzzle. 3. Learning from incident reports to document the mistakes in future. 4. Followup meetings to ensure corrective measures in the projects up ahead. Sometimes a small mistake can cause a huge impact on the project. It is always better to communicate your concerns with all the key stakeholders. Try to change the processes or strategies on things which have a large sample data analysis.

Project setbacks offer a chance to delve into the "why" behind the failure. Fostering a safe space for open communication is crucial. Team members should feel empowered to discuss challenges without fear. By encouraging honest reflection, we gain valuable insights. Key questions: - What went wrong? - Why did these issues arise? - What could we have done differently? Documenting the failure, its root causes, and lessons learned creates a valuable resource to prevent similar issues in the future. However, focusing solely on negatives misses a crucial aspect: celebrating successes! By including "what went well" and incorporating those learnings, we strengthen our processes. This focus on continuous learning positions us for future success.

Following agile helps engineering managers to understand the root of project failure well in advance before the project actually fails. Retrospectives help in reviewing the sprint goals and aligning them with the project goals. Share the status with stakeholders immediately when you first encounter your retrospectives highlighting conflicts and failures in sprint goals with reasons and action items

As a project manager must be focused on the below during the production to avoid high risk failures. 1. Conduct the internal meetings with the delivery team and stake holders to address the issues and track the project status on every day or weekly, depending on project size or requirement. 2. Focus on Project Cost and Budget. 3. Identify the Project Risk. 4. Use RCA tools for internal/external feedback if the project is an incremental delivery model. 5. Identify the tools for production/Quality Check's. 6. Maintain the Records and Collect the historical information and past project files. 7. Monitor and Control the project. 8. Communication with internal and external.

Retrospective is one of the keys to assess our mistakes related to planning, resources, communication and technology. Sit together with the team and encourage open and blame free communication to understand what went wrong and accordingly redefine the goal and empower the team. Continuously monitor the progress and celebrate small wins for boosting the morale of the team. This Will definitely help to recover from failure and move towards success.

I would relook at the following aspects of the project: 1. Purpose: was the goal/ objective of the project clear to all the team members? Was it a shared goal where everyone was committed to its success? 2. Permission: did the project fail because of lack of oversight and support from senior leadership? Were there constraints to explore new ideas or concepts to implement? Was the team sufficiently empowered? 3. Process : was the process of the project execution systematic? Was there too much emphasis on speed at the cost of quality or too much emphasis on a perfect solution at the cost of speed ? Was there team burnout? Addressing the above aspects could help recover from a failed project and take up the next project.

Es fundamental determinar la cuasa raíz de la falla, es decir analizar el proceso completo y todos lo que intervienen para determinar cual parte del proceso fallo y definir acciones para evitarlo.

Clearly define the problem or nonconformity that needs to be addressed. Investigate the root cause of the issue to understand why it occurred. Develop a corrective action plan and implement it. Monitor and verify the plan and prevent its recurrence. Finally, document the plan and communicate the outcomes.

You can never recover from a failed project especially if it is of a big magnitude. The feeling of failure will haunt you for a long time. What you can you do is the following: 1. See where you went wrong and then adjust the methodology. 2. Learn a lesson from the experience. 3. Gather all the information you require to fill the gaps. 4. Pursue another project with better understanding and determination to succeed. See failure as an opportunity to grow in knowledge and experience.

It's challenging to regain confidence and trust after making a mistake. With the remaining responsibilities, develop a strategy that gains traction as soon as you can. Pay attention to what is urgent and will alleviate the most discomfort first. After that, establish precise procedures, costs, and deadlines for completing the job. You'll need to network and get support for your idea. At this point, it's also critical to ensure that you are acting realistically and aren't attempting to pull off a heroic rescue. Challenge your presumptions. Approach your plan critically. Then proceed!

Seek feedback : Apart from the analysis done by internal team, we should also seek feedback from experts about what went wrong and how the things can be improved .actively listen and involve them in recovery process. Transparent communication and accept responsibility: Be transparent with the team, stake holders and superiors and accept responsibility.

It is possible to learn more from failures than success. Regroup the team, we all succeed as one & fail as one. As a manger one must know your team's strength and weaknesses, and play to them. Do not apportion blame, but do a collective wash-up and learn from the collective issues.

Whenever anything fails; i ask three questions - 1. what happened? that is what went wrong? 2. to what extent am I culpable - what is my action of omission or commission that led to the failure 3. what is the way forward? This can only be after critical analysis and admission of the first two questions. This will bring out the learning points that you will use in the next project to avoid a failure

In my humble opinion this is the most important of all. I don’t believe this is a discrete step. You need to sit with the team when you accept the failure (step 1). Make sure they’re focused before you conduct the root cause. Based on the findings, reassure them and let them be part of the solutions. Distracted persons (due to failure of the project or possible blame) will not contribute to your lessons learned or help develop actions to remedy the situation.

Após um fracasso, é importante reconstruir o moral da equipe, oferecendo apoio, feedback construtivo e reconhecendo os esforços e contribuições de cada membro. Promova uma cultura de aprendizado e resiliência, incentivando a colaboração e a comunicação aberta.

Visit the lessons learned database before starting a new project. Understand what are key learnings from other projects which can be applied to the new project.

As a ethical profession first of all , the failure reports shall be acknowledged. The failure analysis ,elicitation through transperant process shall be initated to drill down to know the real root cause. Being a Engineering professional the mistake shall be treated as lesson learn. Where ever possible the internal applicable processes changes if required shall be worked out. Creating awarness,motivation within the team is required to ensure teams moral to be high all the time. Initiating innovative process enhancement ,continuous inprovement challenges on required resources, including future skill development.

Uma vez que as ações corretivas tenham sido implementadas e a equipe esteja pronta, é hora de passar para o próximo projeto. Utilize as lições aprendidas do projeto fracassado para informar e melhorar os próximos projetos.

Encourage your team to focus on identifying the project’s primary drivers that govern decision-making. These may include; budget, schedule, scope, and or quality. At this point, a common place to start is with identifying what the team can do with the least amount of effort. Develop a scenario that costs the company the least and gets closest to achieve the primary goal. If that seems out of reach, prepare a recommendation to terminate the project… but not without scrutiny. While it may seem simple to kill a project, make sure you consider trade-offs that could make the worst-case scenario more possible than originally thought. Furthermore, think about the potential backlash from killing a project.

Just like you did when you wrote code, you need to have a code review of your plans as a leader. Write down (briefly) your plans to approach the next project. Get your team members to vet the plan. Get stakeholders to vet the plan if they have time. This can demonstrate that you're open to feedback, that you're planning ahead adequately, and that you care about future successes for your business. It also means that you are having several brains look at the problem, not just one...which usually leads to better outcomes. Which is, after all, why we do it for code.

1. Keep it transparent. Project doesn't fail in a day. It gives you signals for very long. As a project manager, you need to keep catching those signals and keep your stakeholders in loop about the (potential) issues. 2. Analyze the root cause and have a recovery plan proposal ready to be presented to stakeholders. 3. Don't get into blame game. That's a slippery slope. Be constructive. That will help your team morale as well. 4. Apply all the necessary corrective actions and you are all set to succeed. 5. 80% of the projects fail due to mis communication or lack of communication between teams/stakeholders. Just keep that in mind when you (re) start your next project.

Conduct an after action review (AAR). The AAR should uncover the rout causes and identify actions that can be pursued to facilitate success going forward. AARs are a tool developed by the Army and have a solid background of success in shaping future actions.

Reframe it: Calling something a failure is an interpretation of the experience we put on. Just because a project doesn't go as planned, doesn't always mean it's a failure. Ways to reframe: -How did the team come together? -What did you learn? -How will this improve your process in the future? -How will it help you make better decisions? -What ideas came from this you can use on the next project? It's only a failure if you make it one and don't do anything with it.

There is no zero tolerance in the planet 😉 We should learn from mistakes, failures which is called experience, keep strengthening your APQP systems, update/ adapt latest technologies Try to understand the difference between planning and strategic planning, be clear on your roles and responsibilities especially love what you do 😀😍 definitely you can reduce your failures but not to zero 😉😎 improve your analytical skills and probabilities.

Points 1-5 are all great and you should do all of them. Remember if you do not fail you cannot know if you are improving or getting better. The art is to fail small and quickly, allowing you, your team and your client to improve safely.