An Unacceptable Way Of Failing

Project failures which result from:

the lack of good CommonSense;
lack of commitment from either management or workers.
lack of communication

To see what can should be done to avoid failure, or minimize the costs, both direct and opportunity, see AbandonmentStrategy.

Succeeding when everyone else fails is nice, but failing when everyone else succeeds is fatal.

Is it? When everyone is using technology X, it is ok to fail if you use technology X, but fatal if you had used technology Y instead.

It's fatal to technology Y, so the answer is yes.

Because of the way we defined 'failing', it goes without saying that it is 'unacceptable'. You may quibble with that, pointing out that failures beget new efforts, discoveries, paradigm shifts, et cetera, and so they should be accepted. Point taken. Still, the construct of 'unacceptable ... failing' is a redundance we don't need.

The opening remarks above make more of a statement about conformity than about succeeding and failing, being acceptable or unacceptable.