This is the Project Delivery General Reference page which provides general information and guidelines not captured in any of the best practice areas as well as general reference and other underlying data.

Project Success Rates:

A number of different studies over the past five years put the industry success rate below 50%. A good reference in fact is the Dr. Dobbs site where a 2010 survey found project success rates to be:

• Ad-hoc projects: 49% are successful, 37% are challenged, and 14% are failures.
• Iterative projects: 61% are successful, 28% are challenged, and 11% are failures.
• Agile projects: 60% are successful, 28% are challenged, and 12% are failures.
• Traditional projects: 47% are successful, 36% are challenged, and 17% are failures.

Criteria: A project is considered successful if a solution has been delivered and it met its success criteria within a range acceptable to your organization, challenged if a solution was delivered but the team did not fully meet all of the project’s success criteria within acceptable ranges (e.g. the quality was fine, the project was pretty much on time, but ROI was too low), and a failure if the project team did not deliver a solution at all.