A Retrospective look at our Evolving Understanding of Project Success

Abstract

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 success over the entire project and product life cycle. This paper assesses our evolving understanding of project success over the past 40 years and discusses conditions for success, critical success factors and success frameworks. The paper concludes with a holistic view of project success and its implications for practice. This is an important topic because projects are an increasingly common way of work, and the lines between project and process work are harder to discern. Increasingly, more project managers work in companies using program and portfolio management as a means to organize project-related work. The success of individual projects, therefore, impacts the wider organization in several dimensions and makes the concept of project and project management success that much more relevant. The topic is also important because it has a bearing on the future directions of project management in the strategic context.

The role of monitoring and shirking in information systems project management

“…This paper examined the effect of monitoring on shirking, and the effect of shirking on information systems project success in the holistic context of both project implementation and ongoing use [37]. It contributed by finding monitoring to be a four dimension construct and shirking to be of two dimensions.…”

“…A more recent view of project management defines success at project startup as well as throughout the operational life of the project [37]. Consistent with that interpretation, the current study not only considers a project successful if it came in within its original schedule (the time criterion) and its expected cost (the budget criterion), but also if it still works (the quality criterion) after the implementation (i.e., at the time the subjects in the current study responded to a survey about the project).…”

“…Three items represented the triple constraints of project management [30]. The items assessed the extent that a project had been completed on time and within budget, and still worked at the time of the administration of the survey [37]. The fourth was an overall measure of project success.…”

Towards an integrated measurement of IS project performance: The project performance scorecard

“…The current state of research reveals that there is lack of agreement on not only what constitutes project success but on methods for more comprehensive assessment of project outcomes (Pinto and Slevin 1987;Jugdev and Muller 2005). Noting that all projects are different, Shenhar et al (2002) argues that most research on IS project assessment have failed to make a distinction between the project genres.…”

“…Develop a list of key project stakeholders at the beginning of the project and determine their success categories (Jugdev and Muller 2005) Meeting the project owner's strategic organisational objectives (Collins and Baccarini 2004) Benefits to the stakeholder community includes criteria such as satisfied users, content project team, personal development and learning, economic impact on surrounding community (Atkinson 1999) Learning and innovation Increased stakeholder knowledge to help prepare the organization for future challenges (Nelson 2005) Benefit Benefit to customer, organization and potential for the future (Shenhar et al 2002) Improved effectiveness and efficiency of the client organization (Nelson 2005) Quality…”