They did confirm that relationships between independent variables and project success varied according to the life cycle stage. Their results established a linkage between the two however, it was deemed insignificant. This paper will focus primarily on research findings during period four, from 2000 to the present.Įarlier research, including that of Belout and Gauvreau (2004), sought to establish the impact of human resource management or personnel on project success. These authors concluded that project success in recent years required a holistic view, often combining the perspectives gained from each of the time periods they reviewed. Jugdev and Müller (2005) identified and documented four distinct time periods in their research, beginning with what they classified as period one during the 1960s to 1980s that focused on project implementation and handover with success measured in subjective and objective ways as seen through the lens of different people, to period two from the 1980s to 1990s that focused on critical success factor lists, to period three from the 1990s to the 2000s incorporating the emergence of integrated frameworks, to period four as the 21st century emerged with a focus on strategic project management. Research efforts to identify the sources of project success and understand what concepts and factors are leading contributors has been undertaken for many years. Review of Research and Findings Focused on the Project Success Contributors
This paper will highlight some of the research regarding identifying those factors that promote project success, as well as experiences at one organization based upon a sampling of actual project endeavors. Understanding these relationships and which factors promote project success is valuable. These studies bring significant value to both the practitioner and researcher in light of the significant number of project failures in comparison to project successes. A multitude of studies seek to discover and identify leading critical success factors that will have the greatest impact on project success. The degree to which organizations are successful in obtaining and realizing goals and objectives is influenced by multiple factors, including project management maturity, organizational readiness, culture, industry, training, stakeholder commitment and other factors. Organizations are using project management as a strategic capability and enabler to achieve goals and objectives.
The identification of the relationship between dependent variables, such as project success and independent and moderating variables including but not limited to leadership, communications, team comptencies, role identification and management, project management office maturity, project manager training, stakeholder involvement, risk management, benefits realization management, as well as adherence to traditional constraints, provides insights into where organizations should focus their efforts to ensure and sustain project success. This paper provides a summary of some of those studies and highlights those variables that were found to be most common. There exists a significant amount of research regarding the identification of the leading factors that contribute to project success in organizations.