Failure is not an option -- why not?

     "Failure is not an option" is a famous, and memorable, line from the movie "Apollo 13". I have a favorite shirt, slowly fading, with the line written upon it. Although the line exists within the movie, no one actually said it during the time of the Apollo 13 equipment failure. It is a summary/scriptline composed from a bunch of thoughts and explanations (post-event) from the NASA ground crew.
     Failure may not be an option -- but it does occur. In fact, it would be a rare occurrence, within a business environment, for failure analysis to not occur after an instance of a project or business failure. I am positive that, if I were to startup another business, I would make an entirely new set of mistakes.
     It is not currently popular, but failure analysis also is very useful within the non-business world. It is called "learning from history". It requires recording history as accurately as possible, studying that history, and analyzing what went well and what did not. (It is preferable if people choose to NOT repeat what did not go well.) All three of those steps are difficult but worthwhile.
     So, failure is certainly possible -- yet it still should not be considered an option. Within the world of computer programming, it might be considered to be the default condition. You keep planning for, and defining, all of the situations that you can think of -- and if none of those occur then it falls into the "default" case. It is the bottom basket into which all of the "not-planned-for" events fall.
     Failure occurs but it isn't planned for yet it can be (and, in business, often is) analyzed afterward. But is failure to be allowed? This often ends up being a Return On Investment (ROI) question. In the case of the human astronauts' lives in Apollo 13 there were severe limitations on materials and what could be done but, within those limitations, no effort was too much. In the case of human lives suddenly at risk because of accident or natural disaster, the cost is often analyzed only after the events have passed.
     In the case of the potential failure NOT involving human life, it is much easier to quantify the costs. These include the costs to avoid failure and the costs of having reached the point where one would call it failure (Edison once said "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.").
     It is most useful to determine first the value of success, then the odds of success, and then the amount of resources (time, money, energy) to be invested before purposefully stopping the effort. It could be argued that that would not be a failure because there is no way to know the final result if the effort continued. Yet it also would be difficult to call it a success. As the costs go up and the estimated value of success remains constant, it is a situation of "diminishing returns".
     In summary, failure is the final result when all of the plans for success have refused to come true. Failure, in itself, is not planned; it is not an option. The process of planning for failure makes it just one more planned result and if a planned result occurs then can it be failure?

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Thomas A. Edison
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_132683

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_132683

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_13268