#Fail

One of the key tenets of Agile project methodologies is the idea that it is ok to fail. It is the role of the project manager to support their team in taking risks and allow (in fact, encourage) failure.

But what do you do as the project manager when one of your decisions turns out to be a bad one? When you make a call that is later obviously a mistake?
Well firstly, you should apologise to the team. Properly. And with sincerity. Chances are someone else is going to suffer more than you will from your bad decision.

Then you should quickly move on to making things better.

Sometimes, this is easy. You can just reverse your decision and go back to the way things were. Or there was a clear ‘other’ choice so you can now give that a go. But sometimes it’s not that simple. It might now be too late to change your mind, either because too much time or money has been sunk into a particular path or because it just doesn’t make sense to make more change.

Those are the times when leadership skills come in handy. If life has been made more painful for the team, then you need to put a lid on any recriminations or complaining that ensues. Explain why the decision has been made, allow the team to vent – and then set the expectation that there is no going back over old ground again and again. Actually, this applies no matter why a team finds itself in the position of having to continue on a path that is less than ideal. But it is particularly important when there is the additional emotional baggage of someone in the team having made a ‘mistake’.

There is no easy answer to dealing with decisions that turn out to be bad ones. But the one thing you can be sure of as a project manager is that you’re going to have to do it. The only way to avoid it would be to never take any risks or make any finely balanced decisions – and if you do that, you have no hope of ever delivering a project on time and within budget.