Recognizing and Learning from Failure: Project Management Lessons from a Colorado Summit Bid

Eric Sikorski, Ph.D., Director of Programs and Research

While failure is no fun, it is a part of life. Whether summitting mountains or managing projects, there are times when one must recognize the signs of failure, make the tough decision to call it a day, and learn from the experience to return smarter and stronger next time.
This past summer, I took a vacation to Colorado which was a blast. Three days on the agenda consisted of backpacking into the Chicago Basin, camping, and summiting 14ers (mountains over 14,000 feet). I had no prior mountaineering experience though was with someone who did, and we planned extensively. I had the right gear, was in good shape, and the conditions were ideal; I was feeling confident. On the second day, as I attempted a second summit, I began feeling fatigued, making mental errors, and falling behind. Though I tried to press on, I was aware that poor decisions and continued mistakes, especially near the summit, could be catastrophic (see Wickens, Keller, & Shaw, 2015). 

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Nearing the summit on day 1

I made the difficult call to abandon the summit bid and hiked down to lower elevation. Watching the beautiful sunrise over the basin lakes, I began to reflect on the failure, thinking about it in terms of project management given a summit bid, like a project, is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique…result” (Project Management Institute, 2008, p. 5). Though a project manager (PM) never plans to fail, they do identify the risks and notice the potential signs of failure so that they can correct course. As a last resort, a responsible PM may decide it is best to call it quits before stakeholder and company losses become too great. 

Sun rising over the basin

Recognizing the Signs
In a Project Management Institute (PMI) published article "Managing Troubled Projects", Alaskar (2013) outlines signs that a project may be in jeopardy. Several of these apply to my summit bid:

• Delays in meeting milestones or completing deliverables
  • We left camp late. Scheduled departure was 4:00am and we left at 4:15am
• Project is unacceptably behind the planned schedule
  • The late departure put us immediately behind schedule and it did not get any better from there as we continued to lose time following a missed turn in the dark and several unplanned stops enroute to the summit
• High risk to the project's likelihood in delivering anticipated benefits
  • The delays and my increasing fatigue significantly threatened the likelihood of success, the obvious definition of success being reaching the summit 
• Critical and/or significantly growing technical issues with the project, and
• Frequent intervention required by the management team
  • My travel partner had substantial mountaineering experience, having summited 47 of the 58 Colorado 14ers to that point, making her pretty awesome and the de facto manager on this adventure. The more mistakes I made, the more she had to intervene, such as my hiking pole bottom falling out (I did not properly secure it having rushed to begin the hike) and her catching it while below me on the slope.
• Morale of the team has hit rock-bottom
  • We were both frustrated, with the rushed situation, the mistakes, and admittedly with each other. This contributed to low morale and there was little time to regroup.
    

Of course, in recognizing these signs, there is always hope for turning the project around. A PM certainly need not accept failure, and there is plenty of literature on how to save troubled or failing projects. Yes, I may have been able to eat a CLIF BAR® and rally, but that was not the case. So, in the rare and unfortunate event a project does fail, you can learn from that experience.     

Learning from Failure
In another PMI published article, Ranganath (2006) presents a learning from experience (LifE) cycle for project management that applies to dealing with project failure. The cycle involves:

• Planning the experience – identify milestones where it is important to assess risks and points of failure
• Living the experience – accept that failures and problems are as much a part of the experience as successes
• Reflecting on the experience – examine the symptoms and determine the probable causes of failure
• Learning from the experience – analyze the data to inform appropriate corrective action for the next time, document patterns that may be recognizable in the future, and establish change initiatives for improvement
• Acting on the experience – determine the effectiveness of the change initiatives through execution
• Reliving a new experience – move forward, not dwelling on the mistakes of the previous lived experience while continuing to monitor risks and look for opportunities to improve

My initial reaction was that I will not relive a mountain summit bid experience having learned to restrict my endurance activities to sea level. Upon further reflection, I am willing to attempt another summit though I need to better prepare, now having a more complete understanding of the work to be done and the potential points of failure. This preparation would include modifying my approach to physical training and trying to gain more exposure to heights. I’m hopeful that reliving the experience while better prepared will result in success. However, there is always the chance that, as John Popper aptly sang, “the mountains win again.” 

View when hiking out from camp

Though it may be a bit painful, tell us about a project failure whether work related or not. If you like to climb mountains, tell us about that too! 


References
Alaskar, A. H. (2013). Managing troubled projects. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2013—North America, New Orleans, LA. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Project Management Institute. (2008). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (4th ed.). Project Management Institute.
Ranganath, P. G. (2006). LIfE—learning and improving from experience. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2006—North America, Seattle, WA. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Wickens, Christopher D.; Keller, John W.; and Shaw, Christopher (2015) "Human Factors in High-Altitude Mountaineering," Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments: Vol. 12 : Iss. 1 , Article 1.