A Review of System Failure Classification Schemes

Extensive research in multiple disciplines has sought to determine what factors lead to failures in projects through failure classification schemes. In this paper, one hundred failure classification schemes from twelve disciplines are reviewed. The twelve disciplines are: materials engineering, quality engineering, human factors, project management, organization management, construction engineering, information and software, product development, requirements engineering, resilience engineering, reliability engineering, and systems engineering. For each of these disciplines key papers, methods used to elicit factors and unique factors are identified. The findings of this review offers a basis to further investigate discipline-specific failure classification schemes.