IT PROJECT SUCCESS: WHY SOME PROJECTS SUCCEED AND OTHERS FAILINTRODUCTIONWhat is project success? This seems like a pretty easy question to answer and if you ask 10 people I'm sure you'll get varying answers because success is relative. How to plan for success when you don't know what success is, before you even start you have put yourself on the path to success, i.e. failure. Baccarini (1999, p. 25) explains project success as being twofold, on the one hand the success of the project management and on the other the success of the project product. Project management success borders on the project management process with respect to time, cost and overall quality. As explained by (Pinkerton 2003, p.337), time, cost and quality are the three most important dimensions when it comes to the effectiveness of project execution, while the Success of the project product is limited to the final product of the project and its effects. The two concepts are different, but for one to be successfully achieved, the other must also be. (Pinkerton 2003, p. 344) sums up the above beautifully in one short sentence and that is if the venture is not a success, then so is the project itself. Fundamentally, project product success and project management success equal project success. So ! There you have it, the answer to all project success problems. Well, not really, it sounds easy, but underneath each component is a web of processes that must be completed and principles that must be respected. This is the purpose of this essay, the critical examination of relevant academic literature to obtain contributing factors. to the success of an IT project. By analyzing the basics of project planning to the more complex intricacies of...... middle of paper ......od was by Winston Royce in 1970. According to (Royce W , 1970) the Waterfall method contains the following phases in order, Specification of requirements, Design, Construction (implementation or coding), Integration, Testing and debugging, Installation and finally Maintenance. There follows a flow of events from phase to phase which, as noted above, is first the gathering and documentation of requirements, followed by the design phase which leads to implementation, this is i.e. coding and unit testing. Once this is done, the next stage of development is system testing which then leads to installation and finally delivery and then maintenance. It is a step-by-step approach and, as the name suggests, the waterfall methodology is as linear as possible because one step completes before the next step can begin. AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHOD