The view of success and failure as converses is commonly held. According to this picture, the two terms are antonyms (e.g. Allen, 1938); success is at one end of a spectrum and failure is at the other. They are ‘poles apart’:
However, we argue that a closer look reveals a more complex relationship between the concepts. For example, five different dictionaries, in their definition of the word ‘failure’, all include a reference to ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘lack of success’. But in none of them does the definition of ‘success’ contain any mention of ‘avoidance of failure’ or the like. So, it seems, to be unsuccessful is to fail but avoidance of failure is not the same as success.
But even this does not appear to be adequate if we consider, for example, the concluding remarks of Bertrand Russell in his autobiography (Russell, 1975). In reviewing a long, rich and full life, he says:
My work is near its end, and the time has come when I can survey it as a whole. How far have I succeeded, and how far have I failed? … To this extent I have succeeded. … [but] … In these [other] respects there was failure.
So, for Russell, his life and work was both a success and also a failure. It was not simply a case of one or the other for him, but both. However, in making such judgements and statements about success and failure it is manifestly important to be clear about the entity to which the judgement is being applied. For Russell, this entity was his work as a whole whereas of course in this paper our interest is in information systems. Other examples are easy to find or imagine. A person might be successful as (say) a parent and, at the same time, be a failure as a politician; a movie might be judged a critical success but also be a box office failure. Or, indeed, the entity concerned may be judged neither a particular success nor a failure on any count.
On this argument, then, with respect to success and failure there are four basic ‘poles’ for the entity of interest rather than just two. These are:
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Success and not failure (S and ~F);
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Failure and not success (F and ~S);
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Success and failure (S and F);
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Not success and not failure (~S and ~F).
Success and failure no longer face each other from the opposite ends of a linear spectrum containing intermediate possibilities, as in Figure 1, but may instead be present or absent independently of each other. A better picture of their relationship would, therefore, be that shown in Figure 2.
The picture of success and failure captured in Figure 2 has been introduced in general terms; our interest in what follows focuses on how this may be applied to information systems and their development.