40 Project Success Factors

Projects are a high-wire act, with a million threads that could unravel at any moment.

By their very nature—temporary and goal-driven—budgets and schedules loom large, often dominating a project manager’s radar as the hallmarks of success.  Yet, too often, a team celebrates hitting deadlines and staying under budget, only to discover a silent storm brewing, an unhappy client or project sponsor fixated on overlooked priorities like stakeholder satisfaction or quality outcomes.

True victory isn’t just about the numbers—it’s about aligning every moving piece with the bigger picture.  From the project management plan’s role in defining success to the key factors that bridge the gap between “on track” and “outstanding,” the goal is to illuminate the guide lights on the path to triumph that satisfies everyone involved.

But before we present our 40 example project success factors, let’s make sure we have the basic covered.

The Project Management Plan

There is no excuse not to define project success in writing.  The project management plan should identify all of the relevant project success factors and provide a plan to achieve them.  The template success factors below serve as a great checklist that gives you even less excuses.

Example Project Success Factors

Here is an example from a project management plan:

Knowing and defining your critical success factors can be the secret to ensuring the project finishes as a success. Of course there are always obvious ones that require no explanation (like staying under budget and schedule), but I see very few projects where there are no other success factors than the primary ones.  There are almost always success factors that fly under the radar, like stakeholder issues, occurrence of certain potential risks, and acceptance of certain interim deliverables.

For this reason we have prepared a checklist of potential project success factors.  Next time you are preparing your project management plan and come to the section on project success factors, run down this checklist to make sure you have it all covered.

1. Under budget
2. Ahead of schedule
3. Minimal change orders
4. Project achieves award
5. Stakeholders satisfied
6. Stakeholder’s financial performance met
7. Stakeholder timelines met
8. Stakeholder communications sufficient
9. Stakeholder communications on time
10. Stakeholder approvals given
11. Scope does not change
12. Deliverables are accepted
13. Deliverables are delivered on time
14. Quality of deliverables is acceptable
15. Quality standards are met
16. Product meets minimum performance or specification level
17. Quality control does not uncover quality problems
18. End user adopts the product
19. End user feedback meets a certain threshold
20. Schedule changes accepted by project sponsor
21. Schedule changes accepted by stakeholder(s)
22. Budget changes accepted by project sponsor
23. Budget changes accepted by stakeholder(s)
24. Project avoided unnecessary disruption to the business
25. Project avoided unwanted changes to the corporate culture
26. Project team works well together
27. Project team leaves the project better than they started it
28. Project team is motivated
29. Project team members are satisfied
30. Project team achieves financial reward, bonus, etc.
31. Project team member achieves award
32. Vendors are under budget
33. Vendors deliver on time
34. Vendors achieve quality target
35. Vendors maintain relationship with stakeholder(s)
36. Vendors achieve repeat business
37. Certain major risks do not materialize
38. Certain major risks are successfully mitigated
39. Certain major risks are successfully transferred to a third party (warranties, etc.)
40. Certain major risks occur but are well managed

Now you have no excuse not to have a successful project!