Success and failure factors in ICT projects: a Dutch perspective.

This thesis examines the success and failure factors in ICT projects. The low success rate of software projects in terms of reliability, meeting due dates and working within assigned budgets is widely recognised and topical. International as well as Dutch publications and the procedures in Tarek Abdel-Hamid's work on Software Project Management/Dynamics are discussed. A SUFFI Chart (SUFFI =
SUccess and Failure Factors in ICT projects) is developed. The management of a portfolio of projects is compared with the SUFFI Chart. A number of Dutch projects with which the author was directly involved are examnined to show how they compare with the factors identified from the literature. These do show considerable correlation between important SUFFI factors and project success. The portfolio consists of nine ICT projects and four ICT project audits. Projects such as SAP, RBAC, EAI, charging method, PABX, financial building adrnmistration, information retrieval, book reservations, traffic data collection, introduction of the Internet functionality and SOX, for different companies/organisations (Delft University of Technology, National Police Services Agency, KPN - Dutch Telecom Company, University of Amsterdam, government, banking). This work shows that for a successful project 4 of the
5 most important SUFFIs have to be absent.

Thesis submitted as partial fulfilment of the Engineering Doctorate (EngD) programme.