International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848

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International Journal of Project Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

The “re-meaning” of project success: Updating and recalibrating for a

modern project management
Lavagnon A. Ika a, *, Jeffrey K. Pinto b
a
Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario KIN 6N5, Canada
b
Black School of Business, Penn State University, Erie, PA, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Decades of research demonstrate that practitioners and scholars may have only a vague notion of what project
Project success success is and thus settle for conflicting or inaccurate attributions of this still-elusive phenomenon. Stakeholder
Benefits realization evaluations may differ as multiple groups and coalitions seldom hold the same viewpoint. A project that meets
Complexity
business expectations may have unintended consequences on society, highlighting the importance of sustain­
Stakeholder views
Value
ability. Thus, it remains challenging to devise a parsimonious success model that key stakeholders, internal and
external, can minimally agree upon. This paper updates, recalibrates and further “complexifies” project success
based on four multidimensionality sources: benefits realization, stakeholder perceptions, issues of timing, and
sustainability. The paper proposes a four-dimensional model of success to assess project plan success, business
case success, and green efficacy, along with the shared feeling of key stakeholders. The paper concludes with an
agenda highlighting future research to further our understanding of the project success phenomenon.

1. Introduction
Project-based work is widespread as projects have increasingly
become a preferred means by which organizations, both public and
private, seek to deliver value, through products and services. Projects
offer a methodology for realizing strategic goals, improve economic,
social and environmental conditions for billions of people across the
planet, and at the same time, organize work (Lundin et al., 2015;
Shenhar & Dvir, 2007).
Yet, while project management as a theory and practice experiences
a boom, projects tend to confront, over time, a multiple “whammy” of
time and cost overruns, business case failures, stakeholder disappoint­
ments, and sustainability shortfalls (Flyvbjerg, 2017; Gil & Fu, 2022;
Love et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2022). With such proliferation of the use
of project-based work (Schoper et al., 2018) and modicum of success
(Denicol et al., 2020), has arisen the need for a concomitant
re-assessment of key organizing principles and target goals, leading to
continued interest in not simply the use of projects, but the best means
by which key stakeholder groups can collectively agree upon, at the
business case approval, and assess, at the benefits realization phase,
their success. In practice, this is a wicked problem (Rittel & Webber,
1973), as stakeholders often hold different if not conflicting views of
success (Davis, 2017), and, over time, they may change their minds
(McLeod et al., 2012) and the project may not actually deliver its target
“goal value” or stakeholders’ “desired value” (Browning, 2019).
Effectively, there are ways of working around this wickedness. As an
example, for the last three decades, notably in international develop­
ment project settings, the OECD policymakers have successfully
championed the systematic and, ideally, contingent and adaptive use of
their evaluation criteria. These criteria include: relevance (Is the project
doing the right things?), efficiency (How well are resources being
used?), effectiveness (Is the project achieving its objectives?), impact
(What difference does the project make?) and sustainability (Will the
project benefits last?) (Ika, 2018; Volden, 2018; Williams & Samset,
2010), to which, more recently, the coherence criterion was added (How
does the project fit with other projects?), to better apprehend linkages,
systems thinking, partnerships dynamics, and complexity (OECD, 2019).
Perhaps ironically, although some of the earliest scholarship on
project success arose over three decades ago (c.f., Pinto & Slevin, 1988),
work has continued apace as both practitioners and scholars continue to
grapple with the challenge to devise a parsimonious set of key success
dimensions (groupings of cognate success criteria) that project funders
(seniors executives who commit funds to the project), project owners
(senior managers tasked by funders to lead the project), project

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ika@telfer.uottawa.ca (L.A. Ika).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2022.08.001
Received 4 February 2022; Received in revised form 19 July 2022; Accepted 2 August 2022
Available online 9 August 2022
0263-7863/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd, APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
managers, team members and suppliers, and even end-users or benefi­
ciaries can minimally agree upon, despite their divergent views (Pinto
et al., 2021; Thomas & Fernández, 2008). As Davis (2017, p. 604) notes:
“Currently, there is no recorded theory to determine project success within the
project management literature, which includes both the perspective of multiple
stakeholder groups and shared use of success dimensions for a given project.”
Still, in project management, such a very limited number of key success
dimensions that key stakeholders, both internal and external to the core
project delivery team, would agree on (Thomas & Fernández, 2008),
that would generically apply to most types of projects, and yet, in its
application, cater to the specificity of project type and project setting
(Zwikael & Meredith, 2021), does not exist for non-international
development projects, which form the largest part of its focus in the­
ory and practice.
As the most recent accounts of project success suggest (Ika & Pinto,
2022; Zwikael & Meredith, 2021), the existing success models tend to
focus on a specific class of projects and hence emphasize some idio­
syncratic project elements that “drive” success (e.g., Shenhar & Dvir,
2007). For their part, because other models are generic and thus cater to
different types of projects (e.g., Pinto & Slevin, 1988), they tend to be
incomplete as they overlook some important success dimension. For
example, Zwikael & Meredith’s (2021) success model does not account
for sustainability. Conversely, while sustainability features prominently
in the work of Maltzman & Shirley (2015), stakeholder expectations, by
comparison, appear to have been given short shrift.
As a result, we argue that while our understanding of project success
has evolved from a rather unidimensional, simplistic and reductionist
conceptualization of success to more multidimensional, holistic, and
dynamic accounts (Pinto et al., 2021), most of the existing models of
success still fail to account for stakeholder views and attributions
(Davis, 2017; Kreiner, 2014), issues of timing (Meredith & Zwikael,
2019; Shenhar & Dvir, 2007), and sustainability considerations (Car­
valho & Rabechini, 2017; Maltzman & Shirley, 2015).
Such a dearth is detrimental as it leads scholars to “acknowledge the
complexity of the world but deny it in [their] theorizing” (Tsoukas, 2017, p.
135) and hence to simplify their models of success, thereby limiting
practical relevance when it comes to helping stakeholders reach
consensus over a balance of success dimensions, despite their dissimilar
perspectives. To contribute to this gap in the project management
literature, we were motivated by the clarion call for theoretical so­
phistication in organization and management studies (Tsoukas, 2017),
project behavior research (Ika et al., 2022), and complexity theorizing in
project studies (Tywoniak et al., 2021); therefore, our goal is to
“complexify” project success theory, that is “to seek, respectively, ‘detri­
vialization’ and ‘complication’ of [our] queries” (Tsoukas, 2017, p. 150) in
a search for “profound simplicity” in practice (Schultz, 1979; Weick,
2004).
This paper builds and extends on the work of Ika & Pinto (2022), who
attempt to complexify the project success phenomenon by taking into
account sustainability, time, and stakeholder perceptions, yet failed to
offer an encompassing model of success and its underpinning theoretical
insights. Based on our familiarity with the literature and, in particular,
the OECD’s (2019) sixfold-criteria model, we propose a novel,
four-dimensional (Tesseract) model of success, which specifically links
up project plan success to business case success and “green” efficacy, and
captures the shared feeling of key stakeholders. In so doing, we ground
our work in classic evaluation theory (OECD, 2019), “a theory for design
and action”, concerned with “how to” (Gregor, 2006) assess project
success.
The contribution of this work is twofold. From a theoretical stand­
point, the research adds to the literature as it complexifies, rather than
simplifies, project success theory (Tsoukas, 2017), based on four
“sources of multidimensionality”, inspired by the work of Richard et al.
(2009) on the cognate concept of organizational performance: benefits
realization, stakeholder perceptions, issues of timing, and sustainability.
From a practical viewpoint, practitioners may find the four-
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International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848
dimensional (Tesseract) model of success useful since it may lead to a
better understanding and assessing of project success, as it reconciles
project benefits and success; connects short-term project plan success
(which can be evaluated immediately or soon after project completion)
and medium-term business case success (which can be assessed years
after completion when all benefits or disbenefits have been realized);
accommodates “objective” evaluations and “subjective” stakeholder
views and attributions of success (which can be gauged any time after
completion); and emphasizes long-term, green efficacy or getting things
done in terms of sustainability (which can be measured decades after the
benefits or disbenefits are achieved). At a time when the need to future-
proof projects and ameliorate sustainability is growing and temporal
ambidexterity (Slawinski & Bansal, 2015) on the part of project funders,
owners and managers is required to balance short-term, medium-term
and long-term project success, such practical considerations are critical
to enhance benefits delivery in the medium and long run, while keeping
a close eye on efficient project execution and smooth delivery of projects
in time, cost and quality in the short run. The new evaluation model can
help stakeholders reach consensus on how to define and measure success
(Thomas & Fernández, 2008) before and after the project, and in the
short, medium and long term (Martens & Monteiro de Carvalho, 2014;
Zwikael & Meredith, 2021). Hence, the proposed model can strengthen
prospective and retrospective project success assessment capacity (Pat­
ton, 2021).
The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. The paper first re­
views the literature on the elusive project success construct and accounts
for carefully selected and key existing models of success. Next, the paper
makes a case for theoretical sophistication and outlines four sources of
multidimensionality to further complexify project success research. The
paper then suggests a new, integrative, and more encompassing model
of success, discusses its boundary conditions, and presents its practical
implications. The paper concludes with an agenda of research to further
our understanding of project success.
2. Project success: a literature review and some persistent gaps
The all-important notion of project success has received an enormous
attention over the last four decades in project management theory and
practice. However, the evaluation of project success is a surprisingly
open question with few authors using consistent definitions and mea­
sures (e.g., Zwikael & Meredith, 2021). It is not our intent in this section
to account for all of this rich literature. Here, we focus on defining and
measuring success (success criteria and dimensions) among different
stakeholders (cf. Jugdev & Muller, 2005; Ika, 2009 for full reviews
including success factors).
2.1. Project success: conceptual ambiguity
There are several reasons for emphasizing the criticality of garnering
an accurate meaning behind project success – some professional and
others scholarly. First, without clear guidelines for evaluating success,
project managers’ careers are often substantially affected. That is, if
organizations and their managerial staff have only a vague notion of
what does (or should) constitute the success of a project within a
particular organization, or if different key organizational members are
offering mixed messages about how and when they assess project de­
livery, its project managers may be incorrectly rewarded or sanctioned
due to murky evaluative criteria. Offering erroneous or premature
evaluations of a project’s success can subsequently send out signals to
other project managers as to what “it appears” the organization is
expecting from them and cause them to alter their approaches accord­
ingly, even if these changes will have an ultimately adverse impact on
their project (Pinto et al., 2021).
Second, failure to link success to an organization’s strategic goals
permits its definition to be diffused, as different stakeholders apply
different assessments and/or metrics to the concept. In effect, without
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
clear understanding, success becomes a case of “it depends on who you
ask and when.” “Clearly, any collection of measures should address
more than one need and should represent the concerns of more than one
stakeholder group. But above all, success measures must reflect the
strategic intent of the company and its business objectives” (Shenhar &
Dvir, 2007, p. 25).
Third, “success” that rewards partial performance or some limited
subset of criteria (e.g., speed to market or cost containment) opens or­
ganizations up to ancillary pathologies or toxic behaviors, including
normalization of deviance behavior, as project managers and their
teams receive not-so-subtle messaging that shortcuts taken regarding
quality or safety concerns can be forgiven, just as long as the project is
finished on time or within budget (Pinto, 2014). Consider the example of
workplace safety in construction projects: if site managers perceive that
their performance bonuses are linked solely to speedy completion of
work packages, they may begin applying covert or even overt pressure
on supervisors to press forward with procedures that are potentially
dangerous or ask workers to ignore critical safety steps “just this one
time,” in order to speed delivery. The accumulation of such violations
accompanied by increasingly relaxed standards and performance bo­
nuses sends clear signals to workers as to what the organization truly
values, versus its supposed espoused values.
Fourth, there may not be a clear delineation between project success
and subsequently derived benefits. For example, results-based man­
agement (RBM) has been put in practice for decades in the public sector
where it is customary to distinguish between three types of project re­
sults: short-term outputs, medium-term outcomes, and long-term im­
pacts (Hatton & Schroeder, 2007). Identifying the project’s business case
and linking success to strategic goals, particularly at program or port­
folio levels, requires a more comprehensive perspective on what “suc­
cess” suggests; hence, the relatively recent adoption of benefits
realization (e.g., Musawir et al., 2017; Zwikael & Smyrk, 2012) or value
creation (e.g., Browning, 2019; Laursen & Svejvig, 2016) notably in the
private sector as a complementary metric for a successful project.
Indeed, similar to Morris’ (2013) expansion of what were traditionally
viewed as a project manager’s duties – project execution management –
to include a broader array of front-end responsibilities, we are seeing an
expansion of success assessment to include benefits realization/value
creation through program management and strategic initiatives.
Fifth, project success oftentimes operates as a “lagging” indicator of
our current understanding of the theory of project organizations and
project-based work. That is, as we develop greater insight into the
challenges of managing projects – as projects themselves become ever
more heavily integrated into a variety of organizations – it is necessary
to revisit our understanding of this key metric to see how it needs to be
modified to reflect current realities. To cite one example: Modern project
success criteria rarely give due regard to sustainability issues. These
concepts, while making huge advances in the manner in which business
is conducted across multiple settings, are slow to be absorbed into cur­
rent project management training and reward structures.
Part of our conceptual confusion of what constitutes a successful
project lies in determining the best manner to first accurately define the
idea of success itself. We are often more comfortable applying such
definitions when presented with evidence of clear project failures and
yet it is clear that, to some degree, success and failure are simply two
sides of the same coin. “The body of literature on project success also
encompasses project failures” (Jugdev & Müller, 2005, p. 26). “A success
is just that – a success. It is something that works well for a variety of
reasons, not the least of which may be luck. But a true success often
works precisely because engineers thought first about failure. Indeed,
one simple definition of success might be "the obviation of failure”,
writes Petroski (2013, p. 24) about engineering design success. Yet,
success and failure are not themselves “black and white” notions, as the
same project may present both elements of success and failure, and
different stakeholders may have different views (Baker et al., 1974;
Davis, 2017; Shenhar & Dvir, 2007; Turner & Zolin, 2012).
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International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848
For example, the Airbus A-380 aircraft was a technical success yet a
business failure. While the Heathrow Terminal Five appeared to be an
overall success, it has been hailed as a failure by customers and the
public due to baggage checking issues. As a result, there is often a sus­
picion that project success can be more directly framed as something
that is in the eyes of the beholder.
Consequently, despite a longstanding interest in practice and de­
cades of deliberation in research, project success remains a complex,
ambiguous, and non-consensual concept (Zwikael & Meredith, 2021).
Indeed, project success is often blurred with cognate concepts such as
efficiency, effectiveness, and performance, which few studies attempt to
define explicitly and clearly, except from the OECD and international
development agencies’ glossaries (Ika, 2009; Zidane & Olsson, 2017).
For example, in their popular information system (IS) model of success,
DeLone & McLean (2003) equate success with effectiveness. Project
success and performance often include elements of both efficiency
(“doing things right” or maximizing outputs for a given quantity of in­
puts or resources) and effectiveness (“doing the right things” or
achieving the project’s outcomes and impacts), to which we should add
relevance, coherence, impact and sustainability, as we learn from OECD
(2019).
Project success differs from project performance. Project success is
the end point or the achievement of the goal the organization and
related stakeholders seek to reach through a temporary endeavor.
Project performance instead measures the extent to which the man­
agement processes and practices used to deliver the project are likely to
help meet the project’s planned targets and stakeholder expectations
(Ika & Pinto, 2022). While success criteria relate to the achievement of
the project’s goal and objectives, often after completion (that is, during
operations or benefits realization), performance measures (e.g., KPIs,
which are often based on success criteria) relate to their underlying
management processes and practices, often during execution or at
completion (Crawford, 2014). As Browning (2019) notes, the actual goal
value delivered by the project at completion may differ from the target
goal value assigned to it at initiation (that is the anticipated success), or
the desired value stakeholders expect any time during the project life, or
the likely value of an incomplete project during execution. In this sense,
one can speak of project plan (or benefits realization) performance, if
one is concerned with the project management (or benefits realization)
process itself and how it can help to deliver project success in the end. In
sum, project performance is the degree to which, during execution or at
completion, the project’s goal and objectives, planned targets, and
stakeholder expectations are in the process of being met or not (Ika &
Pinto, 2022).
Given such conceptual ambiguity and the popularity of studies
analyzing and reconceptualizing project success and benefits realiza­
tion/value creation, it is useful to assess some of the motivations driving
this current reappraisal. That is, we can ask the question: what has
changed in project management theory and practice that necessitates re-
examination of project success? In the next sections, we focus on the
dynamic tensions that are affecting our understanding of project success
and consider some of the key trends/reimaginings that have taken place
over the years.
2.2. Project success measurement: evolving criteria and dimensions
Though multidimensionality does not always transpire in its assess­
ment, project success constitutes a multi-faceted phenomenon that
evolves with time according to the type of project, stakeholder, and
context at large (Ika & Donnelly, 2017; McLeod et al., 2012). In accor­
dance with contingency theory, different types of projects have different
measures of success (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007). Short-term performance
assessments may not work for those projects that need time for
commercialization efforts to pan out (e.g., new product developments)
or social impacts to turn up (e.g., social infrastructure, international
development projects) (Pinto et al., 2021). Even the same type of project
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848

may have different measures of success. As Griffin & Page (1996)
observed, more than seventy-five separate measures of success for new
product development projects exist and there is no consensus on which
one works best. National culture may also impact how we assess project
success, especially in the long term (Turner et al., 2020).
Traditionally, project success has been equated to the “iron triangle”
of time, cost and quality (Barnes, 1969); although, ironically, with the
first two being characterized as “best guesses” and the latter akin to a
“phenomenon” (Atkinson, 1999). Other authors have called the time,
cost and quality dimension the “golden triangle”, the “Holy Trinity” or
the “triangle of virtue” (Ika, 2009). The most debated cost overrun
research nowadays and Flyvbjerg’s iron law, which stipulates that pro­
jects are “over budget, over and over again,” essentially belong to this
project success research tradition (Flyvbjerg, 2017; Love et al., 2019).
According to many observers, however, this trilogy is just one
dimension of project success. Based on contingency theory and assuming
that strategic considerations or complexity characteristics within the
project hold different weights, Shenhar & Dvir (2007) propose five
overlapping success dimensions: efficiency (e.g., time, cost and perfor­
mance), impact on team (e.g., specifications and benefits), impact on
customer (e.g., morale, growth), business and direct success (e.g., sales
and profits), and preparation for the future (e.g., new market and
organizational capability).
A striking illustration is the case of Kodak’s Instant Photo, which was
a commercial success one to two years after its introduction but was
considered a business failure in the long term (Griffin & Page, 1996).
Indeed, a “percussion effect” (Ika, 2009) seems to take place as projects
that are hailed as successes in the short term can later become long term,
business or strategic disasters, and others that are considered short-term
failures may well turn into resounding successes over time (de Wit,
1988; Pinto et al., 2021). For example, projects such as the Hoosac
Tunnel, Rideau Canal, Ford Taurus 1, Sydney Opera House ended up
becoming great successes, though they were delivered late and over
budget at their completion. In contrast, others such as EuroDisney, Ford
Edsel, Ford Taurus 2, Google Glass, Iridium, LA Red Line Metro, MS
Zune, New Coke, Sony Betamax were delivered within time and cost, yet
turned (either immediately or over time) into costly disasters (Ika et al.,
2021, 2022).
In line with such a paradox, de Wit (1988) invites us to distinguish
between project management success – the short-term delivery of the
project’s outputs within time, cost and quality targets – and project
success – the medium-term achievement of project outcomes and im­
pacts. Other scholars have made the related distinction between project
management success, that is achieving the project plan, and “project
investment success”, that is realizing the business case objectives long
shortfalls). As we learn from Kreiner (2020), the champions of the
Planning Fallacy assume that project performance is “causally insu­
lated” from the project management process, and thus we already know
what success is (e.g., meeting the criteria established upfront in the
project plan) and how to measure it (e.g., budget target) (Flyvbjerg,
2017). In contrast, the critics of the Planning Fallacy take a broader
notion of projects, rationality, and success; assume that the project
management process is consequential; agency plays a key role in “suc­
cessfulness”; and thus we cannot presume we know in advance what
success is going to be and how to measure it, especially in the face of
changing circumstances (Ika et al., 2022).
At this juncture, we infer that despite a lack of agreement on the
nature of project success, project success measurement has moved from
a rather unidimensional, simplistic, and reductionist scale (e.g., the iron
triangle), to more multidimensional, holistic, dynamic, and integrative
models of success (Pinto et al., 2021).
2.3. Project success models: evolution and critique
In light of the aforementioned conceptual and definitional ambigu­
ity, our understanding of the concept of project success has undergone a
remarkable evolution over the years, as our recognition of the
complexity of the theory and practice of project-based work with the
temporary organization has expanded. Indeed, the lessons from the
longitudinal and historic reviews of project success (see Jugdev &
Muller, 2005; Ika, 2009) are instructive. Table 1 portrays trends
regarding the predominant success dimensions over three periods
(1960s-1980s; 1980s-2000s; and 21st century). Table 2 lists some of the
key existing models of success in the project management literature.
In the first period (1960s–1980s), the iron triangle was the dominant
success dimension and there was a lack of empirical studies as most
reports centered on practitioners’ accounts of their experience (Barnes,
1969). The second period (1980s–2000s) focused on empirical studies.
For example, Pinto & Slevin (1988)’s model of success includes time,
cost, perceived quality, and client satisfaction. The emphasis at the time
moved from project plan success to business case success, albeit with
some consideration mainly for internal stakeholders. For instance, the
Delone and McLean’s IS model of success, which was first published in
Table 1
Measuring success across time (Adapted from Ika, 2009).
Period 1 Period Period 3
1960s- 1980s-2000s 21st century
1980s

after completion (Zwikael & Meredith, 2021). Taking a cue from bene­ Success Iron Iron triangle Iron triangle
fits realization theory, we will call project investment success in this criteria triangle Business case benefits Business case benefits
(time, cost, Benefits to key internal Value of the investment
research, “business case success”. And for convenience’s sake, we coin
quality) stakeholders (client/ for the funding/owner,
project management success “project plan success”. funder, owner, end- the delivery and supply
This separation between project plan success and business case users, project team, (or other partnering)
success mirrors the common distinction between internal, objective organizational organizations
(time, cost, and quality) and external, subjective (project impacts on employees)
Benefits to internal
different stakeholders) measures of success (Jugdev & Muller, 2005; stakeholders
Pinto & Slevin, 1988). In fact, project plan and business case success Benefits to external
constitute two sides of the same coin (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007), the first stakeholders
being tactical and the second strategic, in true deliberate strategy theory Symbolic and rhetoric
evaluations and
(Slevin & Pinto, 1987). However, though they are positively and
attributions of success by
moderately correlated (Serrador & Pinto, 2015), complexity theory diverse stakeholders
suggests that tactical performance may not necessarily lead to the Community,
strategic success. environmental, societal
This distinction between short-term and medium-term success is not impacts or sustainability
Results Outputs Outcomes Impacts
trivial and has, in fact, inadvertently contributed to some of the more chain
rigorous debates in the project management field today. This distinction Time Short-term Medium-term Long-term
lies at the heart of the tensions surrounding the so-called “Planning horizon
Fallacy debate”, a conversation over the extent to which projects tend to Emphasis Project plan Business case success Green efficacy
success
overpromise and under-deliver (e.g., cost overruns and benefit

838
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848

Table 2
Eight models of success (Adapted from Ika & Pinto, 2022)
Barnes Pinto and Atkinson (1999) Delone & Shenhar & Maltzman & Ika (2018) Zwikael & Meredith
(1969) Slevin (1988) McLean Dvir (2007) Shirley (2015) (2021)
(2003)

IS New product Generic International Generic

development development projects
Generic Generic
IS
Time, cost, Time, cost, Iron triangle (Time, cost, quality) Information Efficiency Project Project management Project management
and and quality management success (efficiency/ success (time, budget,
quality performance success time and cost; scope, no undesirable
(iron effectiveness/ impacts by project
triangle) objectives) manager)

Perceived The IS System Impact on Project success Deliverable success Project ownership
quality quality customer (relevance country, success (target
relevance for benefits; business case
beneficiaries, realized)
institutional impact,
sustainability)
(Maintainability, reliability,
validity, information quality use)
Client Service Impact on Green success Project investment
satisfaction quality team success (satisfactory
results, investment
again by funder,
overall success)
Benefits to organization
(Improved efficiency, effectiveness; Intention to Business and
increased profits, strategic goals, use direct success
organizational learning, reduced
cost

Benefits to stakeholder Use Preparation

for future
community (Satisfied users, social
and environmental impact,
personnel development,
professional learning, contractors’
profits, capital suppliers, content
project team, economic impact to
surrounding community
User
satisfaction

Net benefits

While we borrow this table from Ika & Pinto (2022), we have added the Atkinson (1999)’s IS success model, as it is one of the rare models that include most success
dimensions

1992 and then updated in 2003, considers seven dimensions: informa­
tion quality, system quality, intention to use (attitude), use (behavior),
user satisfaction, and net benefits.
The ongoing third period 3 has tended to focus not only on business
case success but also on multiple and diverse stakeholder, environ­
mental, and societal impacts, including return on investment and
competitive advantage for the funding/owner organization (Shenhar &
Dvir, 2007; Zwikael & Meredith, 2021), added value for both internal
and external stakeholders and their individual or collective symbolic
and rhetoric evaluations and attributions of success (e.g., Fincham,
2002; Kreiner, 2014). The impacts on the environment, the community
or the society as a whole have been accorded greater importance. In
other words, there will be more emphasis on “green” efficacy or sus­
tainability (e.g., Carvalho & Rabechini, 2017; Maltzman & Shirley,
2015). Three models of success are noteworthy in this period.
• Turner & Zolin (2012), in their model of forecasting performance
indicators for managers propose seven scales for different stake­
holder groups whose perceptions of project outcomes may change
over months and years: stakeholder satisfaction, project executive
satisfaction, product satisfaction, product efficiency, satisfaction
with specifications, project manager satisfaction, contractor satis­
faction, supplier profitability, and public stakeholder satisfaction.
• Ika (2018), in his success model for international development pro­
jects based on deliberate strategy theory, RBM, and the OECD eval­
uation criteria, draws a two-by-two matrix that over time relates
project management success (time, budget, specific objectives) to
deliverable success (relevance for country, relevance for benefi­
ciaries, institutional impact, and sustainability).
• Zwikael & Meredith (2021) propose three dimensions of success:
Project management success, which is a measure of the project
manager’s performance in achieving the project plan as judged by
the project owner; project ownership success, which is a measure of
the project owner’s performance in realizing the business case as
judged by the project funder; and project investment success, which
is a measure of the actual value generated by the project investment
as judged by the project funder.
As Tables 1 and 2 show, our gradual understanding of success over
the years has led to more integrative models. However, we contend that
this evolution is akin to a progress from what Schutz (1979) calls “su­
perficial simplicity” to “confusing simplicity”. First, the existing models
focus on specific types of projects, but they are rarely generic to cater to

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L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
broader classes or settings; that is, “these models include generic items
that can be used in all projects (for e.g., completion on time and
customer satisfaction), and they also include items that are relevant only
to certain types of projects but are inappropriate for measuring the
success of others” (Zwikael & Meredith, 2021, p. 1746).
Second, as we learn from contingency theory, different projects call
for different success models (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007) and any generic
project success model should be adapted to the specificity of the project
and the idiosyncrasy of the project setting (OECD, 2019). Yet, the lack of
generic models of success makes it impractical to negotiate a “definition
of success among key stakeholders before the start of a project and at
several review points during the project’s lifecycle” (Thomas &
Fernández, 2008, p. 734). As we suggested, stakeholders lack a parsi­
monious set of success dimensions like the OECD’s (2019) evaluation
criteria that they may rely upon to forge practical consensus, despite
their divergent expectations, and policymakers cannot compare the
success rates of projects of different types.
Third, as noted earlier, the existing success models seldom factor in
the key influence of aspects such as stakeholder perceptions (Davis,
2017), issues of timing (Turner et al., 2020), and sustainability consid­
erations (Carvalho & Rabechini, 2017). For example, the relative
importance of project success dimensions may shift over time (Shenhar
& Dvir, 2007).
Fourth, rare are accounts of success that incorporate the shared
feelings of a community of project stakeholders with different expecta­
tions about “what was done and achieved” and thus include “a sense of
community”; that is, the big picture without which the real meaning of a
project is lost. Yet, we know project success may be co-produced by the
project management process and the surrounding context. Success
criteria might represent both an input and an output of the project
management process thus indicating tensions between success as envi­
sioned in the project plan, and performance that is achieved at project
completion (Kreiner, 2014).
Fifth, the existing models, by and large, put forward success di­
mensions, yet they do not consider how different dimensions relate to
each other and project success as a whole. For instance, though Maltz­
man & Shirley (2015) integrate green efficacy in their evaluation model,
it remains unclear how green efficacy relates specifically to each of the
efficiency and effectiveness dimensions.
For these reasons, we argue that the existing models of success fail to
match the complexity of the real project world as they seldom connect
different but interconnected and even paradoxical aspects of projects (e.
g., success dimensions) (Tsoukas, 2017, p. 140). However, the complex
project success phenomenon calls for “complex types of inquiry”
(Tsoukas, 2017, p. 138) and thus more theoretically sophisticated yet
practically relevant models of project behavior and success (Ika et al.,
2022). Therefore, researchers should seek to build models of success that
are akin to profound simplicity. As Weick (2004, pp. 662-663) writes,
“[T]he means to move toward profound simplicity is through doubting
the completeness of their assumptions, through experimenting, and
through entertaining a wider variety of possibilities”.
3. Four sources of the multidimensionality of project success
As we have seen, while practitioners struggle to cope with the dif­
ficulty to define, forge consensus among stakeholders about, and mea­
sure success, researchers tend to insufficiently factor complexity in their
project success models. An avenue is to first unravel “the sources of the
multidimensionality” of project success (Richard et al., 2009) and then
develop a more complex project success model. We submit that theo­
retical sophistication à la Tsoukas (2017) in organization and manage­
ment studies, Tywoniak et al. (2021) in complexity theorizing in project
studies, and Ika et al. (2022) in project behavior research can help
further complexify project success theory. Indeed, these works connect
well with ideas that sought to embrace, not reduce complexity. As
Tsoukas (2017, p. 134) notes: “In other words, from realizing that the
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world is complex, it does not necessarily follow that our theories must
simplify it; the complexity of the world may well spur researchers to seek
to develop ever more complex theories to cope with it.”
We are aware that the dimensions of success and their underlying
sources tend to be interrelated and fraught with tensions such as short-
term versus medium or long-term success; actual versus anticipated
success; and objective actual versus subjective stakeholders’ desired
success (e.g., Browning, 2019). An over-budget and poorly managed
project can subsequently succeed only because creativity kicks in after
completion. A project might be deemed a success yet drag other projects
in the same program/portfolio into failure as complexity and uncer­
tainty take hold (Pinto et al., 2021). Contrary to the well-known Stan­
dish Group CHAOS Reports, the cancellation of a flawed project may be
viewed as a short-term project plan success or a sign of good governance
(Morris & Hough, 1987; Royer, 2003).
Practitioners recognize that “success is, in fact, a dangerous guide to
follow too closely” (Petroski, 2013, p. 23), as carbon copy replication
may not be a winning recipe. More frustratingly, successful projects may
well be a product of random chance (Barney, 1986; Ika, 2018). As such,
replicating the conditions that led to one successful project, whether
they pertain to what happens “in advance of the project” or “in the wake
of the project” (Hirschman, 1967, p. 146) might be impossible due
notably to complexity and uncertainty (Ika & Donnelly, 2017). A project
that meets business expectations may have unintended consequences on
the society or the environment, making sustainability including the
“triple bottom line” of profit, people, and planet crucial (Carvalho &
Rabechini, 2017; Maltzman & Shirley, 2015).
Recognizing some of these tensions, Ika (2009) offers, from an
epistemological point of view, a sharp distinction between an objectivist
approach to project success, where it is assumed that a universal set of
success criteria and dimensions exists, and a subjectivist approach where
project success is viewed as a social construction by project stakeholders
(see McLeod et al., 2012 for an empirical illustration). Thus, a shared,
intersubjective view of project success between different stakeholders is
worth considering.
Still, successful project management relies on identifying key success
dimensions. To validly measure project success, it is necessary to
investigate its multidimensionality sources. Consider, for example, the
work of Richard et al. (2009), p. 723) on the cognate notion of organi­
zational performance, as they note, “dimensionality is related to three
sources within the research context: (a) Who are the stakeholders for
whom a performance measure is relevant? (b) What is the landscape
over which performance is being determined? and (c) What timeframe is
relevant in measuring performance? Validly measuring performance
requires allowing for these sources of multidimensionality.” They thus
suggest that to measure project success adequately, researchers and
practitioners should consider this threefold implication: weighing the
relevance of success for focal stakeholders; taking into account hetero­
geneity of environments, strategies, and management practices; and
understanding the time series properties that relate project activities to
success. We take these sources of the multidimensionality of project
success to cover stakeholder perceptions, benefits realization, and issues
of timing. In light of the growing importance of future-proofing projects,
we would add sustainability. We discuss these useful sources in turn and
highlight their underpinning in the literature.
3.1. Benefits realization and project success: two complementary notions
A relatively new concept within the broader project success field is
benefits realization. Project benefits, as opposed to project success, are
“the flows of value that arise from a project” (Zwikael & Smyrk, 2012, p.
11). “Value” means the sum of economic and wider social benefits to be
accrued minus the costs incurred (Garcia-Castro & Aguilera, 2015; Gil &
Fu, 2022; cf. Laursen & Svejvig, 2016, Martinsuo, Klakegg & van Mar­
rewijk, 2019 & Zerjav, 2021 for a review of value creation, capture and
destruction in project management). Thus, benefits infer a degree of
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
value realization from the project; for example, the continuous revenue
from construction of a toll road, savings from consistent, low-cost energy
generation by a mega-dam, and so forth.
In building a business case for a project, it is often necessary to
propose a set of “target benefits” at the outset (Williams & Samset,
2010), under the expectation that the successful conclusion of the
project will result in the realization of these benefits and subsequent
value. Browning (2019, p.73) differentiates between four types of
project value: actual (“A project’s final value at completion, based on
how things turn out and where the project ends up”), desired (“The
value that stakeholders ideally desire (explicitly and tacitly) from a
project”), goal “The value of a project that meets its chosen goals/ tar­
gets/objectives/requirements”), and likely (“The estimated value of an
incomplete project, given its resources and capabilities”).
Likewise, we might distinguish between four types of benefits: actual
benefits at or after completion, desired benefits from stakeholders any
time during or after the project, (planned) target benefits at initiation,
and likely benefits during execution, to which we add the possibility of
unintended benefits or even disbenefits (e.g., Hirschman, 1967). For
example, the OECD’s (2019) impact criterion concerns the extent to
which the project has generated or is expected to generate significant
positive or negative, intended or unintended, higher-level effects.
Formulating and appraising project target benefits is considered the first
and critical step to ensure successful benefit realization (Bradley, 2010).
In particular, project target benefits support broader organizational
strategic initiatives driving pursuit of future value over and against
current value streams (Serra & Kunc, 2015).
As Zwikael & Smyrk (2012) noted, the challenge with integrating
benefits into more commonly understood project success assessments
has to do with the assumed “micro-macro” distinction between the two
concepts. That is, success is often attributed at an individual project
level, while much of the scholarly work on benefits realization implicitly
or explicitly adopts a program or even portfolio viewpoint. As argued by
Musawir et al. (2017), the net effect of this false dichotomy has been to
hamper our understanding of exactly how project success and benefits
realization form a natural complementarity. Additionally, practical
challenges exist within most project-based organizations, which have
tended to ignore broader, harder-to-measure benefits in lieu of more
overt and recognizable project success criteria. Finally, project man­
agers themselves have been marginalized in many circumstances where
organizations have sought to measure project benefits, as their skillset
and focus may be solely on execution-based criteria of time, cost, quality
rather than broader strategic goals. Ironically, as Jenner (2015) sub­
mitted, it is precisely these “project management” skills that are
necessary to successfully achieve business case and strategic success.
As already mentioned, Zwikael & Smyrk (2012) & Zwikael & Mer­
edith (2021) developed an integrative project success model with three
dimensions, including project management, ownership, and investment
success. Note that the latter two success dimensions directly link benefits
– oftentimes revenue “streams” elements – to more traditional metrics
for the former. They “analyze project success from the funding organi­
zation’s point of view, where benefit realization is most relevant”
(Musawir et al., 2017, p. 1661). Thus, Zwikael & Smyrk’s (2012) &
Zwikael & Meredith (2021) conceptualization is among the first to
integrate project success with measures of benefits realization, while
highlighting the perspective of key internal stakeholders on the funda­
mental question of success for whom.
3.2. Stakeholder perceptions of project success: different strokes for
different folks?
Stakeholders have long been minimized in theories of organizational
performance (Barney, 2018) yet their views are so important (Richard
et al., 2009) that in addition to the pioneering stakeholder theory
(Freeman, 1984), newer scholarship (McGahan, 2021) emphasizes the
crucial role of stakeholder engagement in value creation. A similar
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observation holds for project success contributions to the literature.
Indeed, based on contingency and stakeholder theories, we know that
different stakeholders may have different appreciations of success for
different projects. Again, it is possible to assess the performance of the
project manager in realizing project plan success and that of both the
project owner and funder in achieving business case success (Zwikael &
Meredith, 2021).
There is indeed a disparity between the views of success held by
different stakeholder groups. Stakeholders may include the project
funder, owner, manager, customer, operator, executives, contractor,
supplier, and public stakeholders (Turner & Zolin, 2012) or senior
management (e.g., top management, project sponsor); project core team
(e.g., project manager, team member); project recipients (e.g., client,
customer, end-user) (Davis, 2017); and other external market stake­
holders such as suppliers and nonmarket but “essential” stakeholders
(McGahan, 2021) including regulators, beneficiaries and local commu­
nities, who may control resources that are crucial for value creation (Gil
& Fu, 2022).
Notably, the underlying sociopolitical complexity and the lack of
hierarchical structure of the project’s temporary organization inherent
within the polycentric governance of infrastructure megaprojects often
create collective action problems that may harm consensus building and
decision making (Gil & Pinto, 2018). For example, Gil & Fu (2022) have
shown how collective action problems arising from negotiations and
renegotiations of megaprojects’ value distribution between the pro­
moter and other market and nonmarket stakeholders or between
megaprojects’ target goal value and desired value from essential stake­
holders can lead to project plan failure and in particular cost hikes. As
Jiang et al. (2016) note, “noncompliance of local communities may
cause overruns, delays, or even project failure.” (p. 1)
Further, it has been long established that such high sociopolitical
complexity due to differing if not conflicting stakeholder expectations
tends to lead to tensions between efficiency and effectiveness (Miller &
Lessard, 2000). Chipulu et al. (2019) have found that stakeholders seem
to focus on effectiveness when they assess project success and on effi­
ciency when they assess project failure. The stakeholders-success
equation is not just about who is in and who is out, it also concerns
who creates, who captures, and who destroys value and when. Chang
et al. (2013, p. 1140) offer an interesting illustration of value capture
with the Sidney Opera House: “The value of this project is captured by
Australia as a nation, yet many of the current ‘beneficiaries’ of this
project did not participate in the original value-creation process. This
demonstrates the need to consider project success as an ongoing and
long term (emergent) process of value creation, as compared to the
traditional output measures.” Zerjav (2021, p. 292) proposes a good
example of value destruction caused by what they call “broken agency”
in stakeholders collaboration in the London Crossrail project, which
“suffered systems integration problems between signaling systems and
tracks, adding just under £4 (US$5.5) billion to the original £14.8 (US
$20.5) billion budget”.
Moreover, a shared view of success between (internal and external)
stakeholders is by nature a collective, intersubjective, and difficult-to-
measure feeling about what the project has achieved and not neces­
sarily the easy-to-measure and presumably objective, planned and
agreed success targets set by decision-makers (Kreiner, 2014). Indeed,
project success cannot be assessed just in terms of value as worth (e.g.,
actual value) but perhaps most importantly in terms of value as ideals (e.
g., desired value) (Martinsuo et al., 2019). In this instance, these
rhetorical and symbolic stakeholder evaluations of success may be seen
as narratives where meaning and action are intertwined, turning project
success into a social construction (Fincham, 2002; Ika, 2009). As Turner
& Zolin (2012, p. 87) write: “The perception of success by a project’s
stakeholders often has little to do with whether the project was
completed on time, at cost, and with the desired quality.” Regrettably,
however, and in line with attribution theory, a pervasive “fundamental
attribution error” tends to prevail where any deviations from plans and
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
targets leads to blaming such (internal) stakeholders as project team
members, and thus underestimating the role of complexity and uncer­
tainty in projects, and creating favorable conditions for the business case
to fail over time (Ika et al., 2022; Kreiner, 2014).
3.3. Issues of timing: when is a project successful?
The question – When is a project successful? – continues to attract
interest from both practitioners and researchers (Meredith & Zwikael,
2019; Shenhar & Dvir, 2007). Issues related to appropriate timing for
assessing success are further complicated by linkages to benefits reali­
zation. Recall that “benefit streams” are often related to revenue flows or
accumulated strategic benefits (or outcomes) that can take significant
time to realize, as opposed to a simpler project plan success determinant.
Thus, projects with notorious track records, such as Boston’s Big Dig,
Sydney’s Opera House, New York City’s Second Avenue Subway, or
London’s Heathrow Terminal Five, may, looking through the lens of
sufficient time to gauge accumulated benefits for all strategic partners,
demonstrate strong arguments in favor of their success. In the Planning
Fallacy debate, this argument can also be construed as implicit support
of Hirschman’s (1967) Hiding Hand principle, which asserts that it is not
always bad for planners and managers to underestimate times, costs, and
risks and overestimate benefits and likelihood of success in projects
because they may also underestimate their creativity in the face of un­
foreseen circumstances. This principle also argues for a more robust and
encompassing method for determining final project success (Ika, 2018).
Time is factored differently between permanent and temporary or­
ganizations (Bakker et al., 2016; Lundin & Söderholm, 1995). Different
conceptions of time (e.g., chronological, non-chronological, temporal
ambidexterity) prevail yet we still do not know much about how they
affect project success (Ika et al., 2021; Turner et al., 2020). As Zwikael &
Meredith (2021) suggest, “reflection on project success can also change
as time progresses, conditions change, and the project is viewed in
longer retrospect” (p. 1746).
Thus, project success remains “a dynamic concept with both short-
and long-term implications” (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007, p. 29). A case in
point, for new product development projects, Shenhar & Dvir’s (2007)
five success dimensions have different time frames over the course of the
project and product lifecycles: efficiency (during execution or at
completion), impact on team (months after completion), impact on
customer (months after completion), business and direct success (e.g.,
often one or two years after completion), and preparation for the future
(e.g., likely three or five years after completion). However, authors do
not tend to ascribe precise chronologies relating to success dimensions
for different classes of projects. As a notable exception, Zwikael &
Meredith (2021) suggest that project plan success can be measured
immediately at the end of project execution or soon after when all
project outputs have been delivered, and business case success can be
evaluated at the point in time at which benefits or disbenefits are ach­
ieved. Notably, meeting time, cost, and quality is critical at or just after
project completion. As time goes by, outcomes delivery becomes crucial.
And, it takes years if not decades for impacts to turn out. For example, a
typical assessment of the economic rate of return (ERR) of a World
Bank-funded project may include benefit flows that last 25-30 years.
Sustainability considerations may even take decades or centuries
(Maltzman & Shirley, 2015).
Therefore, we suggest that as success dimensions relative to each
other, short-term “project plan success” can be assessed immediately or
soon after project completion, that is on the delivery of all outputs;
medium-term “business case success”, when all benefits or disbenefits
have been realized years after project completion; and long-term “green
efficacy”, decades after the benefits or disbenefits are achieved (Shenhar
& Dvir, 2007; Zwikael & Meredith, 2021). These shifts in focus of the
assessment of project success over time are further complicated by the
fact that different stakeholders have may have at different times
different appreciations of project success (Davis, 2017; Meredith &
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Zwikael, 2019). “Large projects will have a wider range of stakeholders
making judgments about whether the project and its output, outcome,
and impact have achieved the desired objectives, and these stakeholders
will make those judgments over the months, years, and even decades
following project completion” (Turner & Zolin, 2012, p. 87). In addition,
as Meredith & Zwikael (2019) argue: “Time horizons also play a role
because some stakeholders – a project manager – have a short-term in­
terest; others, such as the project funder – the senior executive who
commits funds to the project such as the CEO or the head of the client
organization—have longer-term concerns” (p. 128). For example, while
the project team and contractors tend to have their eyes on completion,
owners are generally focused on months after the project ends, and
funders, shareholders, and board of directors are more concerned with
what happens years if not decades after completion (Turner & Zolin,
2012).
As the project progresses over time, some stakeholders may change
their opinions (McLeod et al., 2012) and others may emerge and thus
request managerial attention for the project to succeed (Ika et al., 2020).
The iconic Ford Mustang car, launched in 1964, offers a great illustra­
tion. Henry Ford II, company CEO and grandson of its famous founder,
who initially was against the project, became an objective ally later,
especially as 22,000 cars were sold on the very first day. Indeed, Lee
Iacocca, Managing Director of the company, a staunch leader for the
project, was able to draw the support of new stakeholders such as Ford
dealers and young potential Mustang buyers (Ika et al., 2020). In
particular, many projects, most notably, infrastructure and other
high-visibility public works projects (Volden, 2018), are often depen­
dent on positive public opinion over extended periods of time; that is,
from ex ante business case approval to ex post project evaluation.
Sentiment analysis has shown that there are differences in external
stakeholders among key groups, and that it is crucial to tap into their
attitudinal shifts over time for these classes of project (Jiang et al.,
2016). Ultimately, project managers may have to balance short-term (e.
g., outputs), medium-term (e.g., outcomes), and long-term project suc­
cess (e.g., impacts) expectations (Sabini & Alderman, 2021), making
their temporal ambidexterity crucial (Slawinski & Bansal, 2015).
3.4. Sustainable project management: Highlighting “green” efficacy
Understanding the role of sustainability (including adopting a sus­
tainable mindset) in modern organizational operations is a critical step
in expanding our metrics for assessing project success. One reason the
construct of “sustainability in project management” has offered such a
challenge to grasp has to do with a current lack of definitional synthesis.
That is, while business sustainability in general has begun to develop a
set of guidelines or best practices (Rocha-Lona et al., 2017), in project
management settings, sustainability is only beginning to develop
consensus. For example, Gareis et al. (2013) identified a set of sustain­
able development principles relevant for project management: eco­
nomic, ecological, and social orientation; short-, medium- and long-term
orientation; local, regional, and global orientation; as well as value
orientation. Tharp (2012) noted that a sustainable focus recognizes the
interdependence between companies and the broader society and en­
compasses the following aspects:
• Human Rights: discrimination of vulnerable groups, civil rights,
fundamental rights, and principles at work
• Labor Practices: conditions of work, health and safety, and devel­
opment and training
• The Environment: sustainable resource use, pollution prevention,
and climate change mitigation
• Fair Operating Practices: anti-corruption, fair competition, and
respect for property rights
• Consumer Issues: fair contractual practices, dispute resolution, and
fair marketing
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
• Community Involvement and Engagement: employee training and
skills development, wealth and income creation, and community
involvement
Silvius & Schipper (2016) developed a conceptual model, linking
sustainability features and project success. Their research considered a
number of dimensions of project sustainability, which are more or less
positively or negatively associated with success measures. They found
that there are positive associations between sustainability and success
criteria such as stakeholder satisfaction, ‘fit for purpose’, realizing the
business goals, and preparing the future. However, they revealed an
“uncertain” association between sustainability and the delivery of the
project on time and within budget.
Despite these efforts, the notion of “sustainability” in practice is one
that remains in relative infancy and a topic on which the Project Man­
agement Institute’s Body of Knowledge has been largely silent (Armenia
et al., 2019; Eskerod & Huemann, 2013; Ojeda & Reusch, 2013; Silvius
& Schipper, 2016). Some authors have opined that a reason for this
relative late discussion of sustainability is partially due to the very na­
ture of projects themselves and how practitioners and academics alike
perceive them. Because projects are often seen as limited, short-term
undertakings, while sustainability initiatives are expected to endure,
there has been a degree of hesitancy in linking the two fields. Other
authors dispute these arguments, recognizing that while the mechanics
of project-based work are defined by fixed-term activities, projects –
especially megaprojects or those initiated within developing economies
– can have significant long-term impacts, thus requiring organizations to
become mindful of the need to move beyond the “quadruple constraint”
(Pinto & Slevin, 1988), the “diamond model” (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007), or
any other representation that ignores green initiatives (Huemann &
Silvius, 2017; Ika, 2018).
More recently, studies have begun explicitly linking aspects of sus­
tainability to project success, including the use of “Business Excellence
Models” and their inclusion of sustainable criteria (Craddock, 2013),
codes of ethics and personal conduct (Mishra, Dangayach, & Mittal,
2011), and the level of integration of sustainability in projects into the
assessment of project success (Tiron-Tudor & Ioana-Maria, 2013). These
and other scholars have begun recognizing the need for studies on the
convergence of sustainability, project management, and project success
(Martens & Monteiro de Carvalho, 2014). In fact, project management
and sustainability are very much conjoint partners, both in terms of
process and output and provide a good opportunity to weave together
issues of business case benefits, societal impacts, time, and stakeholders
in project success evaluation.
Indeed, from a process perspective, projects have been shown to be
successfully managed with a clear eye toward a variety of criteria: in­
ternal project plan success metrics, commercialization and economic
business case success, as well as an emphasis on sustainability, both
during project development and downstream, once the project has been
completed, and is presumably providing benefits and value for all
stakeholders including the natural environment, which some have
coined “the primordial stakeholder” (Driscoll & Starik, 2004; Winch,
2017). In addition to benefits realization and stakeholder views, another
critical issue that this sustainability perspective highlights remains
time-dimensionality or extended time-dimensional focus; that is, putting
directly into focus the recognition that project success cannot be simply
viewed as a short-term, “implementation-based” construct or even a
“profit-focused” target.
Hence, in our view, sustainability measures the extent to which the
net benefits of the project continue or are likely to continue, and sus­
tainability perspectives imply longer-term appreciation for financial,
economic, environmental, and social impacts, whether they are positive
or negative, intended or unintended (OECD, 2019). Thus, our focus
rests, not with “sustainability by the project” (that is, managing the
project in a socially, economically, ethically and/or environmentally
viable manner) but instead “sustainability of the project” (that is, the
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ability of project benefits to endure beyond project completion) (Hue­
mann & Silvius, 2017; Sabini & Alderman, 2021). In particular, we take
a dynamic view of sustainability and highlight the adaptive capacity
interconnections over time between the project and the financial, eco­
nomic, environmental, and social ecosystems (Patton, 2021).
4. Toward a four-dimensional model of success
Here, we present our proposed model for understanding success, lay
out its boundary conditions, and discuss its practical implications.
4.1. The Tesseract model: the objective dimensions of project success
Based on the contributions of Maltzman & Shirley (2015) and Ika
(2018), we can link project plan success to business case success and
green efficacy. As a starting point, our three-dimensional analysis yields
nine combinations possible for ultimate project success assessment over
time. The following examples are not meant to be perfect (e.g., some
conveniently use a reference time point that is unfortunately earlier than
the date of completion) but they collectively offer a sense of how such
three-dimensional assessment can be made:
1) First, there are projects that are considered all-around successes, “the
holy grail” aspired by policy-makers, funders and managers: they
come in on time and budget or close, deliver benefits at least as ex­
pected and meet sustainability targets; they are altogether project
plan, business case, and green successes; for example, the 2016
opening of the Panama Canal expansion project resulted in a
doubling of shipping capacity through wider channels and locks,
more efficient transiting times, and special attention being paid to
conservation, by protecting indigenous plants and developing a
water evacuation system for locks that saved thousands of gallons of
water each time a ship used the Canal. A true megaproject, with a
$5.25 billion budget and 10-year schedule, the project ran relatively
smoothly, with few unexpected twists or delays (Alarcon et al.,
2011).
2) Second, there are projects that are outright failures not only in terms
of project plan, business case, and sustainability: they experience
cost and/or time overruns, fail to deliver benefits to expectations,
and yield negative sustainability impacts. Although examples are
depressingly commonplace, one striking case (and an interesting
counterview to the Panama Canal) involves the Nicaragua Canal,
intended to be a challenger to the Panama Canal for shipping reve­
nue from vessels crossing from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean.
Although the Nicaraguan Assembly voted to grant a 50-year lease to
a Chinese businessman in 2013 and preliminary survey work
commenced, the project immediately came under fire, as its route
intended to cross Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater body in
Central America. As additional analysis was undertaken and lawsuits
were filed with international bodies to block the canal, the work
continued in a desultory fashion through 2019, with Nicaragua
insisting they will finish the project, despite losing most foreign in­
vestment (Huete-Perez et al., 2015).
3) Third, there are projects that are both project plan and business case
successes but green failures in that they cause harms in terms of
sustainability. A class of projects that has lately seen a great deal of
controversy is the development of large dams, mostly in developing
regions of Africa, Asia, and South America. While there is often a
valid business case to be made for these projects in harnessing hydro-
energy and converting it to electricity, the controversy remains in
terms of the residual, long-term damage to the environment, through
displacement of populations, submerging of habitats, and so forth
(Gellert & Lynch, 2003). India and Norway are two countries that
have refocused their hydro-energy development through the build­
ing of multiple, smaller dams. These are intended to provide
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
electricity but have much less negative impact on the surrounding
communities and environment.
4) Fourth, there are projects that are both project plan and business case
failures but green successes; that is, they hold a net positive effect
sustainability-wise. The California High-Speed Rail (CHSR) project
offers some interesting insight into this particular blending of success
criteria. Originally intended to offer a rail link between San Francisco
and Los Angeles (with subsequent spurs to San Diego), the estimated
cost for the project was first projected at approximately $69 billion,
but as time passed and further analysis was conducted, it was clear
that the original price tag was far underestimated, with later pro­
jections showing schedule/cost figures and revenue predictions that
clearly indicated the project could never recoup its investment.
While CHSR was planned with clear sustainability goals in mind, the
actual business case and project management were so transparently
substandard that Governor Gavin Newsome finally cancelled the
bulk of the project in 2019 (Cox & Vranich, 2008).
5) Fifth, there are projects that are project plan successes but business
case failures and yet green successes. Google Glass is an example of a
project that was intended to streamline and make more efficient
users’ access to data and internet searches, all while wearing a small
screen on a pair of glasses. However, with the exception of some
hospital use by surgeons, the product never caught on with the
public, who questioned its aesthetics and practical uses. Google Glass
was a “well-executed” project within the company, was intended to
appeal to a new generation interested in digital communication and
information, but never found a practical niche in the broader
marketplace (Ika et al., 2021).
6) Sixth, there are projects that are project plan failures but business
case and green successes. A recent example of this phenomenon is the
London Crossrail project including the development of the new
Elizabeth Metro line. While the actual project has dragged on past
several “finish by” dates and costs continue to escalate (Gil & Fu,
2022), the project has also followed a strong sustainability mandate,
including not only the manner in which the digging is being done,
but also the care for identification and recovery of archaeological
artefacts. Because the project is still being undertaken, it is impos­
sible to accurately determine its final “business case” success, but all
projections suggest strong ridership and heavy usage, making the
Crossrail project an important addition to London’s public trans­
portation system (Davies et al., 2014).
7) Seventh, there are projects that are project plan successes but busi­
ness case and green failures. As an example, The Lesotho Highlands
water project, begun in 1986, was developed to divert fresh water
from the mountains for sale to South Africa and for electricity gen­
eration. However, the electricity proved too expensive for most
people and the diversion of so much water caused environmental and
economic havoc downstream. The development fund raised from
selling the water was shut down in 2003. Tens of thousands of people
whose lives were ruined by the water diversion project are still
waiting for compensation (Keketsho, 2003).
8) Eighth, there are projects that are project plan failures, business case
successes, and green failures. An interesting example of this phe­
nomenon may be found in the very public difficulties that some of the
world’s most recognizable airports are currently experiencing –
perhaps none so obvious as Berlin’s Brandenburg Willy Brandt In­
ternational Airport. Although initially developed for a variety of
reasons, including closing other more congested airfields in Berlin,
the Brandenburg project has become a poster child for poor project
controls, runaway costs and sliding schedules, all while continuing to
pollute and clutter the construction site. From conception to open­
ing, it has taken 30 years, with the project missing seven opening
dates along the way, before finally opening in late 2020. In spite of
this spotty record of failure, it is expected that the airport will quickly
become one of the most popular and well-used sites in Europe,
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International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848
resulting in an unlikely business case success on the heels of so much
mishandling of project goals (Geraldi & Stingl, 2016).
9) Ninth, there are projects that are project plan failures, business case
failures and yet green successes. The US Department of Veteran Af­
fairs squandered over $2 billion during the past decade on a series of
ventures to digitize patient medical records. While the goal of this
overall venture was laudable and a means to minimize costly and
inefficient paperwork by shifting to electronic storage and retrieval,
a government audit of these projects revealed that the Veteran Af­
fairs department had blown through more than $2 billion in a series
of spectacular and costly failures to upgrade the software and health
record systems (Allen, 2017).
4.2. The Tesseract model: The subjective and intersubjective dimension of
project success
Since there are only perceived and not absolute evaluations of suc­
cess (Baker et al., 1974), based on the works of Kreiner (2014) & Davis
(2017), we suggest capturing, as well, the shared feeling of key stake­
holders, both internal and external, on each of the above nine ultimate
project success assessments over time (see Fig. 1). Such a shared view
among key stakeholders may occur inside the same group of stake­
holders (intra-stakeholder group consensus) or between stakeholders
from different groups (inter-stakeholder group consensus). For example,
senior executives (funders and board directors) may have to agree on the
target business case success at the approval and on the actual business
case success at the benefits realization stage (intra-group consensus).
Likewise, senior executives may strike a consensus with regulators and
community stakeholders on the target green efficacy at the business case
approval and on the actual green efficacy, long after completion
(inter-group consensus).
4.3. The Tesseract model: boundary conditions and practical implications
for project success assessment
As Shenhar & Dvir (2007, p. 33) suggest: “Since no given set of di­
mensions can serve all projects, managers need to adapt their expecta­
tions to the project type and weight the various success dimensions
based on the project.” Echoing this contingency view, we discuss a few
boundary conditions for the generic Tesseract model of success. Indeed,
we proffer that in a manner similar to the OECD’s (2019) evaluation
criteria, the success model should not be applied “mechanistically”,
irrespective of context.
Thus, it is on first account that the proposed success model be
adapted to the type of project. Take, for example, a new product
development project. It is possible to match the Tesseract model and
Shenhar & Dvir’s (2007) model in the following way: project plan suc­
cess (efficiency and effectiveness), business case success (business and
direct success), green efficacy (preparation for future) and stakeholder
success (impact on customer, team). It might also be worthwhile to
distinguish between exploitation, routinized or incremental innovation
projects such as small product changes or small improvements of oper­
ational processes and exploration, unique, or radical innovation projects
such as next generation projects or extensions of new products and
services. In this instance, the emphasis could rest on project plan success
for the first type of projects, as often their goal value can be determined
in advance, and on business case success as well as green efficacy for the
latter type of projects, since a failure in meeting their time and cost
targets may be offset by their longer-term, desired benefits for different
stakeholders.
Further, we take a cue from Winch’s (2014) three domains of project
organizing and the associated Zwikael & Meredith (2021) project value
domains and distinguish between the temporary organization in charge
of project delivery and two types of permanent organizations, the owner
organizations (which commit resources to the project and operate or use
the project’s outputs) and the project-based organizations (which are
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
Figure 1. A four-dimensional (Tesseract) model of project success
hired by owner organizations to supply services for their approved
projects). In addition to the delivery, owner, and supply domains, we
would add the society domain, which is concerned with the long-term
impacts of the project.
Thus, different domains, along with different key stakeholders,
contribute differently to key dimensions of success and thus carry
different weights. The delivery and supply domains are collectively
responsible for project plan success or outputs delivery; the owner
domain for business case success or outcomes realization, and the so­
ciety domain oversees green efficacy or the extent to which the project
does not harm the community, the society, or the natural environment
with its long-term impacts. While we argue for the existence of boundary
conditions amongst these dimensions, we should note the permeable
nature of these boundaries, in that it is possible for overlaps to occur
between dimensions, e.g., time and cost targets are part of both the
business case and the project plan, whereas green objectives may
equally define the societal domain as well as business case success.
Our model suggests that the project manager and suppliers will focus
on the short term (e.g., project plan success), while the project owner
may focus on the medium term (e.g., business case success), and the
project funder on the long term (e.g., green efficacy). Regulators, envi­
ronmental pressure groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or
the public at large may have a stake in the socio-cultural or environ­
mental sustainability of the project and have a voice at the business case
approval, the execution, and the benefits realization phases of the
project (e.g., Jiang et al., 2016). Additional to the question of timing and
the meaning of these range labels (e.g., “short-term”), it is useful to
reflect that timing itself is subject to the vagaries of the original project
plan and proposed duration. Thus, a short-term perspective for a
reasonably finite software upgrade project may be measured in weeks,
while the short-term for a significant infrastructure build could be
several months or even years. As a result, these chronology ranges (i.e.,
short-term, medium-term, and long-term) are best understood as
uniquely derived for each project, rather than some objective standard
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International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848
against which all projects, irrespective of their intrinsic nature, are
relatively measured.
Nevertheless, key metrics for the project under development must be
clearly conveyed to the project manager so there is no ambiguity
regarding the criteria by which the whole project team is evaluated. In
practice, for a project to be deemed successful in a particular dimension
(e.g., project plan success), it would be sufficient that the relevant suc­
cess criteria overall come close enough to their planned targets (e.g.,
time, cost, quality). The private sector (e.g., suppliers) will tend to
emphasize project plan success, especially in a non-regulated industry.
The public sector, however, which is often wary of externalities and
unintended consequences, will tend to emphasize green efficacy and the
satisfaction of external, essential stakeholders such as beneficiaries and
local communities, particularly in regulated industries. Notice, more­
over, that within these stakeholder category assessments, there are often
two sets of assessments occurring, with one group of stakeholders being
evaluated for each success dimension and the other actively or indirectly
evaluating this form of success (and evaluating the performance of those
who played a role in its attainment) (e.g., Zwikael & Meredith, 2021).
As well, from a learning standpoint, we suggest that the original
business case and plan are respectively important for the retrospective
assessment of the project’s quality-at-entry (or how good the project was
in terms of design integrity and strategic fit at the time of its approval)
and the performance of the implementation planning process (how well
the estimation of time and cost and resources was undertaken). How­
ever, the updated final business case and plan remain the baselines for
respectively measuring the ultimate project’s business case and plan
success.
Overall, our proposed generic success model matches well with the
OECD (2019)’s evaluation criteria (see Table 3).
5. Conclusion and agenda for research
Undoubtedly, project success is an all-important yet complex,
L.A. Ika and J.K. Pinto
Table 3
Matching the Tesseract model, the OECD evaluation criteria, domains of organizing, and timeframes
Tesseract success Project domains of Key stakeholders: 1) who evaluates?, 2) who is evaluated?
dimensions organizing
Project plan Delivery & Supply 1) Who evaluates?: senior executives 2) Who is evaluated?: project
success manager, team members, suppliers
Business case Owner 1) Who evaluates?: project funder, public at large 2) Who is
success evaluated?: project owner, senior executives
Green efficacy Society 1) Who evaluates?: Regulators, NGOs, environmental pressure
groups, public at large 2) Who is evaluated?: senior executives,
project manager
Shared view of All domains All stakeholders
stakeholders
multidimensional, contingent, and dynamic concept for project man­
agement theory and practice. For our evolving understanding of success
certainly matters for how project organizations operate, how they
reward or sanction their employees, and how they strategically invest in
projects (Pinto et al., 2021). However, after some 35 years of research:
“There are few topics in the field of project management that are so
frequently discussed and yet so rarely agreed upon as the notion of
project success” (Pinto & Slevin, 1988, p. 67).
This paper has sought to update, recalibrate and “complexify” proj­
ect success research (Ika & Pinto, 2022) in a true theoretical sophisti­
cation tradition, where complexity is not to be reduced but instead
embraced (Tsoukas, 2017; Tywoniak et al., 2021). To this end, the paper
puts forward and blends four interconnected sources of multidimen­
sionality (Richard et al., 2009): benefits realization, stakeholder per­
ceptions, issues of timing, and sustainability. In other words, the paper
focuses on the nexus between benefits realization and project success
(Zwikael & Meredith, 2021; Zwikael & Smyrk, 2012). It also emphasizes
the contrast between short-term project plan success and medium-term
business case success and the tensions between “objective” assessment of
project success and “subjective” stakeholder views and attributions of
success (Davis, 2017; Kreiner, 2014; Pinto et al., 2021; Shenhar & Dvir,
2007), not to mention the issue of “green” efficacy or sustainability in
the long term (Carvalho & Rabechini, 2017; Maltzman & Shirley, 2015).
In that sense, as part of our evolving understanding of success, the
four-dimensional (Tesseract) model of success, which assesses project
plan realization, business case results, green impacts, and the shared
feeling of key stakeholders, contributes to theory and practice. Indeed,
the danger for project success appraisers in times of complexity is not the
complexity but to act with yesterday’s criteria (Patton, 2021). The paper
points to the need for empirical research not only to test the
four-dimensional model of success and examine how key stakeholders
can forge consensus with these success dimensions but also to tackle the
following questions (Ika & Pinto, 2022):
1) Project success dimensions (e.g., project plan success; business case
success; and green efficacy) are interrelated (e.g., Serrador & Pinto,
2015). Research should look more into the interactions among these
success dimensions but as well with project success as a whole.
2) Based on emerging strategy (e.g., Miller & Lessard, 2000) or even
paradox theory (e.g., Schad et al., 2016), what light can time shed on
success-failure and failure-success projects and other shades of grey
between project success and failure (Ika et al., 2021, 2022)? For
example, perhaps no area of infrastructure projects will factor so
heavily into critical economic development as the megaprojects that
are either currently under construction or being considered on the
African continent. The opportunity to lift millions out of poverty
through these projects leads to a Catch-22 for the World Bank and
other oversight bodies; i.e., do the medium-term business case ben­
efits offset short-term project plan failures (over budget or schedule
slippages)? How does sustainability factor into our calculus? Can we
posit prioritization schemes (which “success” measures are most
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International Journal of Project Management 40 (2022) 835–848
Timeframes OECD criteria
Short-term (e.g., soon after Efficiency and
completion) effectiveness
Medium-term (e.g., years after Relevance,
completion when all benefits are coherence, and
realized) impact
Long-term (e.g., decades after the Sustainability
benefits are achieved)
All timeframes Stakeholder inputs
significant?) based on immediate need or simply through the “art of
the possible?”
3) How can contingency, complexity and cultural theories help
complexify our research on project success in different types of
projects and different contexts (e.g., Pinto et al., 2021)?
4) Taking a cue from attribution theory, what explains the gap between
planned success criteria and targets and stakeholder attributions of
success (e.g., Kreiner, 2014)?
5) Accepting the nature of a “shared view” of project stakeholders as a
key success dimension moving forward, what are the practical and
methodological implications of isolating this shared view; that is,
whose views matter?, weighted in what manner (e.g., McGahan,
2021)?, etc.
6) What can we learn from the unintended impacts of projects on or­
ganizations, stakeholders, community, environment, and society as a
whole? (e.g., Driscoll & Starik, 2004; Hirschman, 1967; Winch,
2017)?
7) Some stakeholders may play a weightier role in the formulation of
project goals and the ultimate determination of its success than
others (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007). It is often necessary to obtain the
services of a “referee,” or some arbitrator, who can resolve disputes
within polycentric project organizations (Gil & Pinto, 2018). In this
context, how to devise an arbitration mechanism to allow the project
team to rank order or otherwise prioritize stakeholders as a
precondition for addressing their potentially disparate concerns or
cross-guidance? And, following completion, how to ensure that the
project maximizes the “greatest good for the most important group”
(to modify Bentham’s utilitarianism)?
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to the editor-in-chief, Prof. Martina Huemann, who
oversaw the review process of this paper. The paper has strongly
benefitted from the careful reading, the numerous helpful suggestions,
and the insightful critiques of three anonymous reviewers, to whom we
are also grateful.
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