Creating environments at work that acknowledge that failures will happen—and supporting the efforts team members make to recover—can help your organization become more effective. You cannot predict every challenge, but by embracing risk and providing opportunities for people to experiment, you can be more productive.

Without revealing problems, there is no problem-solving, since we can't solve something we aren’t aware of. Each solved problem is one fewer problem in the software—and the software is improved each time a problem is removed. But it's not testing alone that improves software. So when does that happen?

Success and failure teach different lessons. Lessons from failure tend to revolve around what not to do next time around, whereas lessons from success focus on what you can do again, perhaps even better. But whether you experience success or failure, the key is to take the time to learn from what happened.