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Can a Project Fail Because of Good Decisions?

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farshid adavi Project Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse

In a previous discussion, I asked whether a project can succeed because of bad decisions. Now, I would like to explore the opposite:

Can a Project Fail Despite Good Decisions?

Imagine a project team choosing a more responsible option—one based on the best available information, appropriate risk analysis, stakeholder interests, and long-term value.

The decision may reduce future risks or environmental and social impacts, but it also requires additional cost or time.

Later, circumstances change. An unexpected risk occurs, a key assumption proves wrong, or market conditions shift. The project misses important cost or schedule targets and is ultimately considered unsuccessful.

Was the original decision therefore a bad one?

This creates an interesting challenge, particularly when we look at project success through a sustainability lens.

Some decisions may weaken short-term project performance while protecting value beyond the immediate project boundaries. On the other hand, a seemingly successful outcome may sometimes be the result of a poor decision that simply turned out well.

If we judge decision quality mainly by project outcomes, we may reward luck and penalize responsible decision-making.

So how should we distinguish between a good decision and a good outcome?

And when sustainability requires us to think beyond immediate cost, time, and scope, can a project fail while its key decisions were still right?
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Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
A very important question, Farshid.
I think the distinction between decision quality and outcome quality is fundamental.
A responsible decision made with the best available evidence, appropriate consideration of uncertainty and relevant trade-offs does not automatically become a bad decision because the eventual outcome was unfavorable.

I would add one nuance: a project can fail despite a good decision, which is not necessarily the same as failing because of it.
Between a decision and the final outcome lie execution, subsequent decisions, changing conditions and events that may not have been reasonably foreseeable at the time.

There is also a second question hidden inside the idea of project failure. If cost or schedule performance deteriorates while longer-term value or sustainability outcomes improve, we need to be precise about what exactly has failed, according to which criteria, and over what time horizon.

Perhaps the key is therefore to evaluate decision quality based on the evidence, uncertainty, reasoning and legitimate constraints that existed when the decision was made, while keeping the evaluation of outcomes analytically distinct.
Later evidence should help us learn whether the reasoning or assumptions could have been better, but it should not allow hindsight alone to redefine the quality of the original decision.

Otherwise, as you rightly suggest, we risk rewarding luck and penalizing sound judgment.
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1 reply by farshid adavi
Aug 11, 2026 12:39 PM
farshid adavi
...
Thank you, Luis. Your distinction between “failing because of a good decision” and “failing despite a good decision” is particularly important.

It also raises another question for me: perhaps the difficulty is not only how we evaluate the decision, but also how we define failure itself.

If a project misses a short-term cost or schedule target but creates greater long-term value or avoids significant future environmental or social costs, calling it simply a “failure” may tell us more about our evaluation criteria than about the quality of the project or its decisions.

I also agree that decisions should be evaluated based on the information, uncertainty and constraints available at the time they were made, while outcomes should remain an important source of learning rather than a retrospective verdict on the decision itself.

Perhaps this leads to a broader question: Should decision quality itself become part of how we evaluate sustainable project success?
avatar
farshid adavi Project Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse
Aug 11, 2026 11:57 AM
Replying to Luis Branco
...
A very important question, Farshid.
I think the distinction between decision quality and outcome quality is fundamental.
A responsible decision made with the best available evidence, appropriate consideration of uncertainty and relevant trade-offs does not automatically become a bad decision because the eventual outcome was unfavorable.

I would add one nuance: a project can fail despite a good decision, which is not necessarily the same as failing because of it.
Between a decision and the final outcome lie execution, subsequent decisions, changing conditions and events that may not have been reasonably foreseeable at the time.

There is also a second question hidden inside the idea of project failure. If cost or schedule performance deteriorates while longer-term value or sustainability outcomes improve, we need to be precise about what exactly has failed, according to which criteria, and over what time horizon.

Perhaps the key is therefore to evaluate decision quality based on the evidence, uncertainty, reasoning and legitimate constraints that existed when the decision was made, while keeping the evaluation of outcomes analytically distinct.
Later evidence should help us learn whether the reasoning or assumptions could have been better, but it should not allow hindsight alone to redefine the quality of the original decision.

Otherwise, as you rightly suggest, we risk rewarding luck and penalizing sound judgment.
Thank you, Luis. Your distinction between “failing because of a good decision” and “failing despite a good decision” is particularly important.

It also raises another question for me: perhaps the difficulty is not only how we evaluate the decision, but also how we define failure itself.

If a project misses a short-term cost or schedule target but creates greater long-term value or avoids significant future environmental or social costs, calling it simply a “failure” may tell us more about our evaluation criteria than about the quality of the project or its decisions.

I also agree that decisions should be evaluated based on the information, uncertainty and constraints available at the time they were made, while outcomes should remain an important source of learning rather than a retrospective verdict on the decision itself.

Perhaps this leads to a broader question: Should decision quality itself become part of how we evaluate sustainable project success?
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David Portas London, United Kingdom
How about Lean decision making: Delay decisions until the last responsible moment. The example you described seems to imply that there might have been a better outcome if the decision had been taken later. Perhaps the decision was a good one but the approach to decision-making was at fault.

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