Quality professionals are often told that “failing to plan is planning to fail.” You might be surprised to learn that this phrase is a misleading myth at best and actively dangerous at worst. Making plans is important, but our gut reaction is to plan for the best-case outcomes, ignoring the high likelihood that things will go wrong.

A much better phrase is “failing to plan for problems is planning to fail.” To address the high likelihood that problems will crop up, you must plan for contingencies.

When was the last time you saw a major planned project suffer from a cost overrun due to quality issues, whether faulty outputs or rushed designs that both result in costly do-overs? It’s not as common as you might think for a project with a clear plan to come in at or under budget.

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