Ghaffari, M (2014) A detailed analysis of existing project success factors. In: Raiden, A and Aboagye-Nimo, E (eds.) Proceedings of 30th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2014, Portsmouth, UK.
Abstract
The quest for knowledge about which factors influence project success has long been at the centre of attention of the project management community. This quest has produced an enormous number of success factors claimed to assist project professionals. This study is built on the results of 100 empirical and theoretical papers written on project success factors published since the late 1960s and aims to take them one step farther and establish their implications through categorising and statistically analysing them, in addition to explaining the underlying trends that exist for changes of success factors over time. Papers have been sorted into 4 groups: construction, IT/IS, new product development (NPD) and general. This classification will help this study to answer the following questions: What are the most repeated success factors in each category? What are the relationships between success factors from different types of projects? How has researchersÕ focus on project success factors changed over time? Through answering these questions, this paper identifies the fundamental differences between types of projects and warns practitioners that missing the most relevant success factors might lead to focusing on misleading areas of projects. It also reveals that general papers, constituting the majority of papers written on success factors, are not impartial and their results are biased in favour of IT/IS and NPD projects (that were identified to have more similar success factors), hence factors obtained from them are less applicable to the construction industry; something that needs to be considered by researchers in the construction management field. Furthermore, this paper highlights the change in researchersÕ focus on success factors from those related to the project team and management level to higher levels of the organisation and external environment. The main contribution of this paper is to identify the above hidden implications of papers written on project success factors.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | project success; statistical analysis; success factors |
| Index terms: | practitioner, new product development, construction industry, project management, project team, project success, success factor, statistical analysis |
| Subjects: | practitioner, innovation studies, health monitoring assessment and metrics, project delivery, data science, project management theory and practice, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Project Management, Research Practice, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here