Project Success: A Multidimensional Strategic Concept

No project is an island: linking projects to history and context

Our views on project success have changed over the years from definitions that were limited to the implementation phase of the project life cycle to definitions that reflect an appreciation of succ...

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A Retrospective look at our Evolving Understanding of Project Success

This article highlights the characteristics of articles on project success published between 1986 and 2004 in the Project Management Journal (PMJ) and the International Journal of Project Management (IJPM) The analysis covers references, concepts like project management success, project success, success criteria, and success factors; features of the samples, data collection, and analysis techniques used; and professional disciplines The results show that research on project success is characterized by diversity except in epistemological and methodological perspectives The article suggests a shift to project, portfolio, and program success and concludes with a discussion on the traditional state of the research, criticizes its assumptions, and offers alternative metaphors and recommendations for future research

Project success as a topic in project management journals

The Need for New Paradigms for Complex Projects

http://ieg.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~aigner/projects/planninglines/evaluation/Project_Management/papers/baccarini96complexity.pdf

The concept of project complexity—a review

Project success is a core concept of project management but its definition remains elusive. The project team must have a clear understanding of their project success objectives. This paper uses the...

The Logical Framework Method for Defining Project Success

Information technology (IT) projects are renowned for their high failure rate. Risk management is an essential process for the successful delivery of IT projects. In‐depth interviews with IT professionals from leading firms in Western Australia were undertaken to determine how IT risks were managed in their projects. The respondents ranked 27 IT risks in terms of likelihood and consequences to identify the most important risks. The top five risks, in order, were: personnel shortfalls; unreasonable project schedule and budget; unrealistic expectations; incomplete requirements; and diminished window of opportunity due to late delivery of software. The respondents overwhelmingly applied the treatment strategy of risk reduction to manage these risks. Furthermore, these strategies were primarily project management processes, rather than technical processes. This demonstrates that project management is a risk management strategy. Scope, quality management, and human resource management were solutions applied to several risks. In particular, managing stakeholders’ expectations is a specific risk treatment that helps to manage several key IT risks.

Management of risks in information technology projects

Over the past decade there has been a growing literature on project success criteria, however there has been relatively little empirical data. This paper provides a significant contribution to the knowledge of project success by providing empirical data on the subject, by means of a survey of 150 Australian project managers on the subject of project success criteria. An analysis of the data found two distinct views: those that perceived project success solely in terms of the traditional project objectives of time, cost and quality; and those that considered success in terms of these objectives and the effectiveness of the project's product. The traditional project management success criteria of time, cost and quality still has a strong hold within the project management community in Australia. However, the most important success criterion was considered to be the product success criterion of meeting the owner's needs.

David Baccarini

Papers

The concept of project complexity—a review

The Logical Framework Method for Defining Project Success

Management of risks in information technology projects

Project success — a survey

The risk ranking of projects: a methodology