failure

Failure refers to the state or condition of not achieving a desired or expected result. It is often defined relative to a standard, goal, or performance criterion, and its assessment can vary across individuals, cultures, and contexts. Because success and failure are value-laden judgments, what counts as a failure may change with circumstances and over time.

Failure occurs in many domains. Personal failure can relate to goals such as employment, relationships, or health. In organizations, failure may involve strategies, products, or policies that do not meet objectives. In technology and engineering, failure describes a malfunction, breakdown, or degradation of a system or component; in reliability engineering, failure is associated with events that cause a product to cease performing its intended function.

Common causes include errors in judgment, planning or execution; insufficient resources or information; design flaws; external shocks; and the complexity of the system. Failures can be single incidents or the result of cumulative stress, and they may be predictable or stochastic.

Consequences range from minor setbacks to catastrophic outcomes, including safety hazards, financial losses, and reputational damage. Responses emphasize prevention, recovery, and learning: risk reduction, contingency planning, root-cause analysis, and organizational learning. Some traditions view failure as a necessary step toward improvement, while others emphasize accountability and sanctions.

Attitudes toward failure vary by culture and field. In science and software development, postmortems and the fail-fast ethos aim to expose and address problems early. In high-risk industries, formal failure analysis and safety standards guide prevention and mitigation.

Measurement and analysis of failure use metrics such as failure rate, mean time between failures (MTBF), fault trees, and reliability testing. In project management, failure to meet milestones or objectives signals project risk and may trigger corrective action.