Many of us monitor our steps using smartwatches to check our fitness levels. Doctors and nurses routinely check a patient’s heart rate and blood pressure as the first part of a consultation.
But how often do we, as program and project managers, check the critical success factors of our projects?
Not as often as we should.
A seminal article by Toni Somers and Klara Nelson (2001) identified 22 Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for ERP implementations. While written over two decades ago, the core insight remains valid: projects do not fail randomly — they fail when known success factors are neglected.
What has changed is the environment. Today’s projects operate in a world of:
- Agile and hybrid delivery models
- AI-enabled decision making
- Distributed and global teams
- Accelerated transformation timelines
Yet despite these advances, the fundamentals still hold.
Why This Matters More Today (With Current Data)
Recent data reinforces the importance of actively managing CSFs:
- The Project Management Institute (PMI) Pulse of the Profession 2024 reports that only 48% of projects are considered successful (meeting scope, time, and budget).
- Organisations with strong executive sponsorship deliver 38% more successful projects.
- McKinsey (2023) found that large IT projects run 45% over budget and 7% over time on average, with benefits often falling short by up to 56%.
- A 2024 Gartner study highlighted that poor stakeholder alignment is now the leading cause of digital transformation failure, overtaking technical issues.
The message is consistent: success is governed by discipline around fundamentals, not tools or methodology alone.
The Full List — Still Relevant
The original 22 Critical Success Factors remain a strong reference framework:
- Top management support
- Project team competence
- Inter-departmental co-operation
- Clear goals and objectives
- Project management
- Interdepartmental communication
- Management of expectations
- Project champion
- Vendor support
- Careful package selection
- Data analysis and conversion
- Dedicated resources
- Steering committee
- User training
- Education on new business processes
- Business Process Re-Engineering
- Minimal customisation
- Architecture choices
- Change management
- Vendor partnership
- Vendor’s tools
- Use of consultants
The Top Critical Success Factors — Then and Now
Somers and Nelson identified the following top five CSFs. They remain highly relevant, but their modern interpretation has evolved.
1. Top Management Support (Still #1 — and widening in importance)
Executive sponsorship is no longer passive oversight. It now requires:
- Visible, active leadership
- Fast decision-making in complex environments
- Alignment with strategic outcomes
2. Project Team Competence (Now including adaptability)
Beyond technical skills, teams now require:
- Cross-functional capability
- Data literacy and AI awareness
- Ability to operate in ambiguity
High-performing teams are increasingly “T-shaped” — a concept popularised by IDEO and now reflected in PMI’s Talent Triangle — combining deep expertise with the ability to collaborate across disciplines.
3. Inter-departmental Cooperation (Now “enterprise alignment”)
Silos remain one of the biggest risks.
Modern reality:
- Products and platforms span multiple business units
- Value delivery depends on integrated workflows
4. Clear Goals and Objectives (Now outcome-driven, not output-driven)
Projects are shifting from:
- Deliverables → Outcomes
- Outputs → Measurable value
Best practice today:
- Define success using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
- Tie deliverables directly to business benefits
5. Project Management (Now delivery leadership, not just control)
The role has evolved from:
- Tracking and reporting, to
- Orchestrating complexity and enabling flow
Modern project management includes:
- Hybrid governance (Agile + traditional)
- Real-time dashboards and predictive analytics
- Active risk sensing rather than reactive reporting
What Has Changed Since 2001
While the core Critical Success Factors identified in 2001 remain structurally valid, their relative importance has shifted. In particular, factors such as change management, data readiness, and stakeholder alignment now exert greater influence on outcomes than traditional execution-focused disciplines alone.
🔹 Change Management (Now a primary driver)
- Resistance to change is still the #1 adoption barrier
- Leading organisations embed change capability from day one
🔹 Data & Integration
- Data quality and migration remain major failure points
- Modern programs must treat data as a product
🔹 Stakeholder Engagement
- Continuous engagement replaces periodic communication
- Digital tools enable real-time visibility and feedback
🔹 Vendor Ecosystems
- Programs now rely on multi-vendor ecosystems, not single providers
- Vendor alignment is critical to delivery success
A Practical Shift: From Awareness to Active Monitoring
The real issue is not whether we know these factors.
It is whether we actively monitor them.
High-performing programs now:
- Track CSFs as leading indicators, not lagging metrics
- Use dashboards that include:
- Executive engagement levels
- Stakeholder alignment scores
- Team capability heatmaps
- Change readiness indicators
In effect, they treat CSFs the same way clinicians treat vital signs.
Closing Thought
Projects rarely fail because we lack knowledge of what matters.
They fail because we stop checking what matters.
We do not lack lists of Critical Success Factors.
What we lack is evidence that we are actively managing them.
So the question is not what the literature says.
What are your top five Critical Success Factors — right now — and how are you measuring them?
I would be interested to hear what others see as their top five — and how they track them in practice.
SquaringTheTriangle 
Join the conversation — how do you Square the Triangle?