Success Factors and Failure Causes in Projects: Analysis of Cluster Patterns Using Self-organizing Maps

The specialized literature on Project Management is plenty of lists of success factors and failure causes, thought there is not a general agreement on this matter and it is highly dependable of the perspective of the observer. Subjectivity is inherent to these concepts and they are also influenced by sectorial, cultural and geographical differences. This paper presents the study carried out to analyze these factors, specifically the patterns that can be draught from an exploratory study based on a survey. This work is part of a global study on analysis of success factors and failure causes in projects. A questionnaire has been aimed specifically to project managers to gather information on the degree of influence of different factors on the failure or success in a project. Behavioral patterns were found using clustering techniques, Self-Organized Maps (SOM) specifically, concluding that in the population sample there are 9 clearly differentiated groups (clusters).