Further Considerations in Project Success

The project management profession in the broader sense is mostly satisfied with the usual, widely used success criteria and factors, which are actually useful in themselves; they express the essence of the project's aspirations and are easy to use, and their fulfillment really correlates with success according to the relevant literature. It is understandable that certain players, for example contractors, almost exclusively concentrate on these, but still, the prediction and interpretation of success is a more complex problem. Researchers and experts have long been trying to answer the most important questions relating to the success and failure of projects. Their approaches differ fundamentally; therefore, the possibility of a consensus is a continuous quest. Everyone suggests different solutions and names different factors and criteria to define success. In what direction and how much the range of criteria and factors have to be integrated raises further questions, effectively making research endless and limitless. This summary concentrates on a smaller section of the whole research on success; the prediction and definition of success can only be done well with a well thought-out, customized set of tools adapted to the given project. This article gives a survey on ideas, principles, attempts and results based on a deep literature research to help the reader get better immersed in this topic and perhaps develop a new, unique view of success by understanding this review.