Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Applied Research in Business, Management and Economics

Year: 2022

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/4th.bmeconf.2022.03.01

[Fulltext]

Defining Project Success, a System Thinking Approach

Paul W.M. Cuypers

ABSTRACT:

Although research is inconclusive, a consensus exists that project success is a subjective, multidimensional, time, context, and stakeholder-dependent construct. A definition of project success is a prerequisite to assessing the success rate of the parent organization and demonstrating the effectiveness of project management methods. This research uses a system thinking approach to develop a generic model of a project’s achievement. It is shown that project success or failure can be viewed as the extreme values of system states, and complex system behavior can be visualized and evaluated using cause loop diagrams. The relevance of the model is demonstrated by corroborating five key findings from previous research on project success.