Abstract

Project success research has been a field of importance for more than three decades. The research field has been developing along the passed the time; however, our understanding of this development is very limited. This study aims at understanding the longitudinal developments in the project success research field and discussing and elaborating further results based on previous studies. For this purpose, a literature study was conducted where the emergent research interests were identified. After that, two separate syntheses of success factors and criteria were developed for identifying the most often present ones (later termed weighty). The findings of this study present the evolution process of project success research. This directs one’s attention to the nature of project success research, leading research questions, main targets, outcomes, and chronological presentation of the obtained results. In addition, this study led to interesting results concerning project success factors and criteria. The findings suggest that there are 65 factors contributing to project success, among which communication, top management support, project manager’s competency, clear objectives and realistic obligation, monitoring and feedback, and risk management are the critical ones. Moreover, 13 frequently mentioned project success criteria in the literature were identified where meeting cost, meeting time, customer satisfaction, meeting quality, and business success are the top five ones. The findings of this study can be insightful for the research community and project practitioners to be aware of the development process of project success research.