IT Project Success Factors: An Experience Report

Large investments are made annually for development and maintenance of IT systems, systems that support the core business of all types of companies and organizations. Successful outcome of IT projects is therefore a crucial issue for the economy at large, yet a majority of the IT projects carried out today fail when it comes to finishing on time, within budget and with the desired quality. The contribution of this paper is the experience from 28 IT projects. The influence of IT project success factors, derived from previous research, were assessed by the project managers and compared with the projects outcome in terms of time, budget and quality. Though the dataset is too small to allow generalization, the success factors Risk analysis, User involvement and Top management support turned out to be of particular importance for the reviewed projects.