18 Jan Acknowledge (and Learn from) Failures

As a programmer, you won’t get everything right all of the time, and you won’t always deliver what you said you would on time. It’s important, to be honest with yourself and stakeholders, and take failure as an opportunity to improve. If you try something new, the odds are you’ll fail from time to time. Without trying, you can’t learn. And without learning, you can’t be effective. Acknowledging that something isn’t working takes courage. Not being honest about your failures denies you a chance to learn and reflect on how you could have done better. There is an opportunity to improve your estimation or technical skills. Failures are inevitable. Acknowledging and learning from them provides value. Denying failure means that you wasted your time.