Fail Quickly.

One of the most important aspects to business innovation is learning how to fail quickly. I have been in many situations and business environments where the organization is so set on success of a project, they don't look at the outcome to understand if they should be continuing their development.

Project/product managers and line managers should be equally accountable for constantly checking premises, testing results, and understanding the benefits of success. While it is true that this is risky behavior, in the sense that speaking up and declaring failure may lead to a dismissal, or closure of "your" project, the right thing to do is to always keep an eye out for the ultimate, rather than the intermediate success of your product. What is the ultimate success? DOES IT COMPLETE ITS MISSION? In most cases, especially in today's financial climate, that test should be: Does it gain us market share? Will it make us more margin? Will it increase sales? Will it completely change the marketplace? There are many other "litmus" tests for your project, but you should continually ask them, always taking the risk that the answer is no.

On the other side is the result of not failing quickly. I have seen companies spend MILLIONS of dollars on projects; never to have them succeed. We aren't talking about striving to be the first to the moon here. We are talking about mid-tier management tools, with intentions of simplifying business process, which end up mimicking current process and never make things better. Furthermore, they were undertaken on political rather than profit-margin motives, and their success or failure was based on completion, not on benefit. In each of the companies I have seen this behavior, they are now suddenly in financial strife. (one of them so worthy that moniker that they are the motivator for our government's "financial bailout package").

We have to assume this behavior isn't just in technology, but also in the politics at the "top levels" of the organization, where people are thrown political bones for their favorite political scheme. So, if we see it in the IT arena, we should assume it trickles upward into the core philosophy of the organization. As a consultant, I have the opportunity to raise the awareness as high as it can go, and tell the CEO or even the board: "Sirs, the emperor is naked. You should clothe him immediately, or advertise him as naked. More importantly, you should FIRE THIS TAILOR!"

So, keep the words in the back of your head. Fail Quickly.