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Revision as of 12:19, 20 March 2006 by 212.219.119.150 (talk) (→Criteria for failure)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) For other uses, see Failure (disambiguation).Failure in general refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It may be viewed as the opposite of success.
Sean lister!!!
Formal technical definition
Failure is defined in ISO/CD 10303-226 as the lack of ability of a component, equipment, sub system, or system to perform its intended function as designed. Failure may be the result of one or many faults.
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.
Jared Diamond lists some reasons by which a society can collapse (book):
- failure to anticipate,
- failure to perceive.
Bibliography
Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, by Scott A. Sandage (Harvard University Press, 2005).
See also
- Failure analysis
- Failure rate
- Failure mode
- Single point of failure
- Cascading failure
- Structural failure
- Tensile strength
- Power outage
- Debugging
- Murphy's law
- Miserable failure
- Tarik Farhat