In a recent interview with Jim Johnson from the Standish Group, InfoQ had the opportunity to speak with the creator of The CHAOS Chronicles: representing 12 years of independent commercial research on project performance of over 50,000 completed IT projects.

While much of this report discusses the process that the Standish Group uses to compile their data, there is a very good discussion about the role that agile methods play in project success. In fact, they list the Top 10 Reasons for Project Success based on their research. Given the depth of their research, you may want to take heed to this list. While less humorous than David Letterman's Top Ten Lists, it does provide quite a punch (don't forget to finish reading this blog post after LOL on Letterman's :o).

Top 10 Reasons for Project Success:

1. User Involvement
2. Executive Management Support
3. Clear Business Objectives
4. Optimizing Scope
5. Agile Process
6. Project Manager Expertise
7. Financial Management
8. Skilled Resources
9. Formal Methodology
10. Standard Tools and Infrastructure

Two things stand out in this list for me....

• First, a number of the critical success factors directly relate to a disciplined agile approach (user involvement, optimizing scope, agile process, and formal methodology).
• Second, there just as many (or more!) critical success factors that a discipline agile process depend on to drive true project success.

Often times we on the agile soap box like tend to think that an agile process is the one and only critical success factor for success. Sure, the agile manifesto and its related principles are deep and incorporates a number of elements, but we tend to forget that process only represents one level of change in an organization.

In this top ten list there is a challenge for both camps - agile and otherwise...

• For the non-agile (or yet to be agile) community, the challenge for you is to determine how you can introduce and leverage an agile process to increase your project success rates.
• For those already in the agile camp, the challenge for you is to recognize that there is more room for improvement and to compliment your agile process with a higher level of executive management engagement, aligning more closely with your business objectives, recognizing your fiscal responsibility for projects, and hiring or contracting skilled resources to fuel success.

You can read more about the Standish Top Ten and their results here. You can also read more from the author - Jim Johnson in his new book "My Life is Failure".

What has been your critical project success factor?