Ok, by that measure I guess over 90% of projects would fail. Which would probably be unfair in most cases, because unlike this project, where the scope as defined by the client was 100% clear from the start, most clients when starting out with a project can't really say exactly what they want, so the scope creep is not only driven by the agency, but also (sometimes mostly) by the client.

> most clients when starting out with a project can't really say exactly what they want, so the scope creep is not only driven by the agency, but also (sometimes mostly) by the client.

Most clients know exactly what their goal is ("To increase market recognition", "to increase conversion rate", etc). The scope creep can only happen in a requirements phase[1]. Once a client has signed off on exactly what will be delivered, and what the payments milestones are there's no wiggle room for the agency to continue experimenting.

If you're skipping the requirements phase because "agile"[1], then the work will be over budget, over time and under the scope.

There's very few projects that actually require the exploratory-driven process that agile uses. If you have one of those projects then farming the management of it out to an agency is exactly the wrong thing to do.

[1] There may be multiple requirements phases. For example a large "need to revamp our website" project can be split into multiple serial projects, each with their own requirements phase.

[2] I.e. We'll figure out what is acceptable to the client with constant feedback.

I think the goal is not to eliminate "failure", but reduce it. Failure will always exist but it always requires interpretation. Thus the credos of "failure is learning experience", "don't be afraid to fail" etc.

It's a very abstract term. To put in simpler terms you will always have some outcome mismatch and generally your goal should be to reduce it. But if you do not have outcome mismatch, then you should push the line so that you can look ahead and understand future areas for improvement. Or you can just stay content if "market" is not chasing you.

The problem as I see it is that projects often start without a vision, or even clear goals; even if there is a vision, it ends up getting lost and forgotten in a sea of feature requests.

Not only should we be asking if a project has achieved its original goals once it’s finished, we should be continually assessing progress against those goals throughout the life of the project - yet few projects I’ve worked on actually do this, even when I’ve explicitly requested it.