Criteria for failure

The criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. A situation considered to be a failure by one might be considered a success by another, particularly in cases of direct competition or a zero-sum game. Similarly, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.

It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria, or heuristics, to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.

Types of failure

Failure can be differentially perceived from the viewpoints of the evaluators. A person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an Outcome Failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A failure can also be a process failure whereby although the activity is completed successfully, a person may still feel dissatisfied if the underlying process is perceived to be below expected standard or benchmark.

1. Failure to anticipate
2. Failure to perceive
3. Failure to carry out a task

Commercial failures

A commercial failure is a product that does not reach expectations of success.

Most of the items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop."

• For flops in computer and video gaming, see List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
• For company failures related to the 1997–2001 Dot-com bubble, see Dot-com company
• See also Vaporware

Internet meme

The term "miserable failure" has also been popularized as a result of a widely known "Google bombing", which caused Google searches for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush.

See also

• Cascading failure
• Debugging
• Failure analysis
• Failure rate
• Failure mode
• Forensic engineering
• List of military disasters
• List of railway disasters
• Murphy's law
• New product development
• Non-event
• Planned obsolescence (also built-in obsolescence)
• Power outage
• Product
• Product management
• Single point of failure
• Structural failure
• Tensile strength
• White elephant
• System accident