For many enterprises, sustainable success is closely linked to information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). Despite significant efforts to improve software project success, many still fail. Current literature indicates that most of the software project problems are related to management, organizational, human, and cultural issues—not technical problems. This paper presents results of a survey of 36 software owners/sponsors, contractors/suppliers, and consultants on 12 projects. The empirical results address answers to questions related to success, performance metrics, and project business drivers. A lack of alignment on these critical issues emerge consistently by phase as well as across the entire project. The results of this study also are compared with others that span seven additional industry sectors. As a result, the authors have developed an approach that links project critical success factors (CSFs) to corporate strategy, and project metrics to the CSFs. An important finding of this study is the critical need to identify and manage realistic expectations of the stakeholders to achieve perceived project success.
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