Empirical Software Engineering, 8, 285–308, 2003. # 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands. Prioritizing and Assessing Software Project Success Factors and Project Characteristics using Subjective Data CLAES WOHLIN claes.wohlin@bth.se Department of Software Engineering and Computer Science, Soft Center, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Box 520, SE-372 25 Ronneby, Sweden ANNELIESE AMSCHLER ANDREWS aandrews@eecs.wsu.edu School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164- 2752, USA Editor: Khaled El Eman Abstract. This paper presents a method for analyzing the impact software project factors have on project success as defined by project success factors that have been prioritized. It is relatively easy to collect measures of project attributes subjectively (i.e., based on expert judgment). Often Likert scales are used for that purpose. It is much harder to identify whether and how a large number of such ranked project factors influence project success, and to prioritize their influence on project success. At the same time, it is desirable to use the knowledge of project personnel effectively. Given a prioritization of project goals, it is shown how some key project characteristics can be related to project success. The method is applied in a case study consisting of 46 projects. For each project, six success factors and 27 project attributes were measured. Successful projects show common characteristics. Using this knowledge can lead to better control and software project management and to an increased likelihood of project success. Keywords: Project success, subjective measures, project assessment. 1. Introduction War stories from failed software projects are much too common (Glass, 1998). Failed software projects often make the headline news, but it should be remembered that most projects are not disastrous. This does not mean that there is not room for improvement; running software projects is difficult and requires continuous vigilance to ensure that projects are successful. In particular, it is important to manage risk and work actively on risk prevention and mitigation. Many organizations collect a myriad of data about projects that is supposed to help them to assess projects. Not all are objective measurements like number of defects or effort spent. Other project attributes that have been claimed to impact project success are based on project personnel’s expert (subjective) judgment. Such data is most easily and commonly collected as part of a questionnaire. We call such measurements subjective and the project attributes measured subjective variables. There are two types: project variables (e.g. stability of management team) and success variables (e.g. timeliness of release, perceived quality of the software). While