Project success factors and inter-sectoral differences

Abstract

Successful project management depends on a number of factors. These factors are generally categorized into procedural factors, structural factors and behavioral factors. In addition, the organizational structure and the sector also play a role in successful execution of the projects. This paper attempts to identify various factors that are important for successful project management and relate them to the type of organization. Two types of sectors namely public and private are considered in this paper. Data was collected from 235 senior project managers from the two sectors. The data was collected with respect to their perception in terms of the importance of various items. There were 21 items on which data was collected and Principal Component Analysis was used to extract 5 factors out of these items. Factor scores for each of these factors are calculated and these factor scores are used to identify the relative importance of each of these 5 factors. These factor scores are compared between the two sectors to identify the specific nature of their importance in the two sectors.