Project success is critical to the success of organizations that rely upon projects.  Companies should analyze factors related to the success of their projects to select strategies likely to offer the best returns and obtain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Figure 1: Project Management and Sustainable Competitiveness

It is also important to make clear that project success is not the same as project management success. To understand this in a greater detail, Project management is defined as “to plan, organize, direct, and control of company resources for a relatively short-term objective which has been established in order to complete specific objectives and goals.” Here we can clearly see that the role of project management is mainly to guide the project delivery or implementation of a project and its deliverables. Thus, a success of project management is related to a process of project delivery within the stated time, budget, and quality requirements. From those points, we can see the difference between project success and project management success. The prime difference that can be seen from the definition that a project is a temporary endeavor telling that there is a certain deadline for a project. Time frame usually cannot be used to measure project success. There are reasons why those projects are being carried out. The main reasons are to satisfy specific need, to solve a problem, and consequently have a specified or unspecified objective. Those objectives should be measured to see project success, and this is regularly only possible after project implementation.

Some project management experts proposed a measurement for project success as follows: “the success in the implementation process; the perceived value of the project; and client satisfaction with the result.” “Meeting design and planning goals; customer benefits; benefit to the developing organization; and benefit to the defense and national infrastructure” are the measurements proposed by others. Furthermore, other experts also proposed the square root model of project success where dimensions are divided into 4 categories (the iron triangle, the benefits to the stakeholder community, the benefits to the organization, and the information system). In other words, project success was divided into three categories: doing the process right; getting the system right and getting the benefits right.

Additionally, others introduced a four-dimensional framework for measuring project success by addressing short-term and long-term project objectives. In this case, project success is linked to competitive advantage and comprehensive project framework consists of “efficiency (meeting schedule and budget goals); Impact on customers (customer benefits in performance of end products in order to meet customer objectives); Business success (the benefit of project in commercial value and market share); and Preparing for the future (new technological and operational infrastructure and market opportunities are created).” Other experts also added some criteria for project management success and project success, precisely, “project management success is measured against the triple constraint while project success is measured against the reasons for undertaking the project in the first place.” The triple constraint mentioned consists of variables of time, cost, and scope. Moreover, others even broaden project success measures by using several additional variables. For example, three “pillars of project success”. One of these pillars, the criteria of which were related to costs, time, scope, and benefits realization was named the “value delivering” pillar. Arguing on this, others stated that together with these dimensions, teamwork effectiveness should be incorporated.

Additionally, another view of project success identified that the relative importance of success dimensions differs by “nationality, individual personality, contract type, and project type”. Also, others introduced process-related and outcome-related categories and in both categories, there are three criteria. Process-related category consists of time, cost, and product (the triple constraint) while the outcome-related category consists of use, learning and value.

In conclusion, we can conclude that there is no comprehensive and clear definition of project success and moreover meaningful and measurable constructs of project success need to be developed. Also, it is not the same if we talk about public sector projects, non-profit organizations projects, or private sector projects. Project success will be different for different types of projects. For example, public projects are usually for country developments as socioeconomic assistance and these kinds of projects are different from those such as commercial or industrial projects. Therefore, individuals and stakeholders often will interpret project success in different ways. Projects differ in uniqueness, complexity, and size, therefore the criteria for measuring success may vary from project to project. It is also important to highlight those individuals and stakeholders will interpret project success differently. Thus, project success depends on two main components which are the causes that result in those criteria being met and the criteria by which the project is judged to be a success or failure.