Given the current importance of Information Systems (IS) in organizations due to their role in improving productivity and leveraging investments (Hu and Quan, 2005; Özturan et al., 2019), it is crucial that IS projects succeed. However, it has been frequently reported that IS projects show low levels of success (Iriarte and Bayona, 2020; Bilir and Yafez, 2021).

The complexity involved (Morcov et al., 2020), project underestimation of resources and time, inadequate requirements, changes in scope, unassessed, uncontrolled or unmanaged risks throughout project implementation, unrealistic expectations, and inappropriate methodology are some of the reasons pointed out for the failure of IS projects (Cerpa and Verner, 2009). Poor project management practices seem to be a significant cause of many issues verified in these projects.

Some well-known studies – e.g. the Standish Group’s Chaos Reports (Standish Group, 1994, 2015, 2018, 2020) – clearly state low levels of success over the years. However, these results have been somewhat contested, because studies are not always described in detail. Furthermore, they are typically focused on software development projects and not specifically on enterprise IS (socio-technical) projects (involving Information Technology (IT) implantation in organizations) (Varajão and Carvalho, 2018).

Even though many studies in the literature show results of software development projects, few of them address the success of IS projects and aim to explain how such success is influenced by project management practices (Varajão et al., 2017). Defining, understanding, and achieving success in a project is not easy nor straightforward since it depends on many aspects, such as stakeholders’ perceptions, project characteristics (e.g. complexity), circumstantial aspects (e.g. context), evaluation details (e.g. criteria and measurement models), and many other aspects that need to be considered (Varajão et al., 2022). For the purpose of our study, considering the efficiency and efficacy of a project, project success is defined as project management success combined with output success (Baccarini, 1999).

Our study complements existing research by addressing the following research question: “Is the success of Information Systems projects influenced by project management processes implementation?”. An international survey was conducted with experienced IS project managers in order to answer this research question, asking them to report both the success level achieved in the last three to five (concluded) projects they had participated in and the frequency of implementing a list of project management processes. Subsequently, several statistical analyses were carried out to test the influence of processes implementation on project success.

This paper is organized into five sections: literature review; research design and methodology, main findings and results; discussion of results, and, finally, the conclusion, which presents the implications of this study for practice and research, as well as future work.

Our method involved administering an online survey to IS project managers. The collected data was analysed using quantitative statistical analysis, namely descriptive and inferential analysis.

Project managers were asked to characterize the last projects they had participated in. Each of them reported three to five completed projects, of varying types, costs, and duration, as summarized in Appendix B. Almost 42% of the projects were related to the implementation of ERP/CRM systems; 19.3%, to the implementation of custom systems; and the remaining, to BI implementation, process improvement, and others (e.g. system maintenance). The systems’ development/implementation type was mainly customized development (41.9%) and implementation of packaged software/Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) in combination with customized development (31.6%).

Regarding project duration, slightly more than half of the projects (54.1%) lasted up to nine months, and the average duration of a project was six months. Concerning budget, the reported projects represent a wide range of project sizes, including budgets under 25,000 Euros to budgets over 2,000,000 Euros, with the majority of the projects having a budget under 250,000 Euros).

Figure 1 shows the execution frequency of project management processes grouped by the respective knowledge area. As expected, cost, time, and scope management are performed very often. The same does not happen with processes such as risk, procurement, and quality management.

Regarding the projects’ success level, as shown in Fig. 2, IS projects are achieving high levels of success, with the majority of projects at the top levels (about 52% of the projects are in levels 9 and 10 of success), and only 16.1% are below level 7. In contrast, the percentage drops to 7.4 regarding the projects below the middle point (level 5). Compliance with scope, time, and cost is also frequent, albeit with changes to the initial plan.

Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and Spearman’s rho statistics were used to investigate the influence of project management processes on success. These non-parametric tests were selected since the assumptions for using parametric tests were violated (e.g. normal distribution of variables). These tests were also chosen considering: the number of variables, the type of measurement and the number of levels of variables, and compliance with statistical assumptions.

Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare the four levels of process implementation (“Never”, “Occasionally”, “Often”, “Always”) on the dependent variable scope management success, time (schedule) management success, and cost management success. Mann-Whitney tests were used to compare the four levels of process implementation on the projects’ compliance to scope, time, and cost (i.e. projects in which “scope, time, and cost were simultaneously fulfilled WITHOUT changes to the original plan”). To check whether there was a statistically significant association between processes and the overall success (level of success), correlations were computed using Spearman’s rho statistics.

Table 1 sums up the statistical tests, highlighting the cases that have significant results ( p < 0.05 ), showing the relationship of project management processes’ executing frequency on success.

IT/IS projects have not been synonymous with “success” in the last decades (Petter and Vaishnavi, 2008). The Standish Group reports are a landmark in the development of this vision of “failure”. This entity has published the first Chaos Report in 1994 (Standish Group, 1994). Despite focusing on software development projects, the results of the study were extrapolated to IT and IS projects in general. The Chaos Report 2020 (Standish Group, 2020) shows that only 31% of projects are successful, 50% are challenged (fail in at least one criterion, and 19% fail. Over time, with the periodic publication of these reports, the idea that IS projects are problematic has persisted (Marnewick, 2012). Fincham (2002) states that this area often seems to be captive of its own failures (Thomas and Fernández, 2008).

However, the results of our study show that overall IS projects are being completed according to scope, time and cost (respectively, in 94.1%, 87.5% and 89.8%) of the surveyed cases. But when considering the initial baseline, the percentage of projects that simultaneously fulfilled scope, time, and cost (without changes to the initial plan) is about 26.1%. This shows that in the context of IS project management, under the perspective of project managers, fulfillment of scope, time, and cost is not rigidly tied to initial plans.

Table 1 shows that no individual relationship was found between project management processes and the three dimensions of project management success (scope management success, time management success, and cost management success). At first sight, this can be perplexing, since it was expected that at least scope management processes do influence scope management success (or scope compliance), time (schedule) processes do influence time management success (or time compliance), and, similarly, cost management processes do influence cost management success (or cost compliance).

Nevertheless, this can be justified by the fact that scope, time, and cost management processes are the most frequently executed and put in practice in almost all projects. In other words, these particular results can be explained due to insufficient variance in the data sample regarding the execution frequency of processes and the success obtained in each of these knowledge areas.

In contrast, a broad set of processes have a positive impact on overall success, including scope, time, and cost management processes. Overall success (success level) is influenced by 38 processes, which corresponds to more than 80% of the total processes under analysis. In fact, there are very few processes in which a relationship with success has not been found. It is observed that all processes from Resources, Quality, Risk, Stakeholders, and Communications process groups impact overall success. A large percentage (over two-thirds) of the number of processes in Integration, Scope, Time, and Cost process groups also influence overall success. The procurement process group has fewer influencing processes (only the “Planning procurement management” process impacts overall success), which is explainable by the fact that not all projects require procurement.

Regarding projects with no deviations of scope, time, and cost (simultaneously), the number of influencing processes decreases from 38 to 21. What stands out is the influence of processes of Risk Management and Quality Management, since these are the processes least put in practice, and these results highlight their importance for achieving higher levels of success.

Overall, considering the results as a whole, it is clear that projects with more mature and professional project management achieved higher levels of success. This is in line with Kerzner (2019) findings, as he states that the implementation of project management processes is related to higher maturity levels of project management, enhancing the competitiveness of organizations (Głodziński, 2019).

The results obtained regarding the process group Integration (IM) are also in line with those reported in the literature. For example, Nasir and Sahibuddinm (2011) state that management processes, such as the processes identified in the process group Integration (IM), influence project success more than processes related to technical implementation and development. Plan and project management work are also some of the success factors referred by Chen (2012) and Ram et al. (2013). Other studies present similar insights (Chow and Cao, 2008; Farzin et al., 2014; Ismail et al., 2012; Ram et al., 2013; Ziemba and Oblak, 2013).

There are also studies (Müller and Turner, 2007; Panopoulou et al., 2014; Nelson, 2018; Thomas and Fernández, 2008) that confirm that the definition and management of the Scope (process group Scope (SM)) and the definition of the requirements are aspects that determine a project’s overall success, as our study also concludes. The results related to the process group Time (schedule) (TM) are also aligned with several studies (Chow and Cao, 2008; Collins and Baccarini, 2004; Nasir and Sahibuddinm, 2011; Müller and Turner, 2007; Nelson, 2018; Thomas and Fernández, 2008), in particular regarding the development, management, and control of time, as well as the realistic estimation of schedule and its activities.

The results obtained in our study corroborate previous research regarding the process group Cost (CM) (Alias et al., 2014; Denolf et al., 2015; Fortune and White, 2006; Nasir and Sahibuddinm, 2011; Osei-Kyei and Chan, 2015), which point to a realistic estimation of costs and budget, as well as their management, as influential factors for success.

Regarding the processes related to the project team included in the Resources group (HRM), the study confirms the need for proper team management (Aga et al., 2016; Ismail et al., 2012; Morlhon et al., 2014; Panopoulou et al., 2014; Wu et al., 2017). However, HRM is not just about team management, since it also involves team planning, building, and development (Chow and Cao, 2008; Nasir and Sahibuddinm, 2011; Ram et al., 2013; Tam et al., 2020), and the management of other resources.

As in our study, the need for quality assessment is referred as one of the processes influencing success (Collins and Baccarini, 2004; Nasir and Sahibuddinm, 2011; Müller and Turner, 2007; Thomas and Fernández, 2008). Regarding risk management, the identification of potential risks and risk plan management are processes mentioned in the literature as potential facilitators of success (Collins and Baccarini, 2004; Poon and Wagner, 2001). However, there was no evidence in the literature about the separation of qualitative risk analyses from quantitative risk analyses, as is considered in our study. Nevertheless, both type of analyses contribute to success.

Regarding the process group Stakeholders (StM), the importance of stakeholders engagement is mentioned by many other studies as a success enhancer (Denolf et al., 2015; Ika and Donnelly, 2017; Nasir and Sahibuddinm, 2011; Pankratz and Basten, 2014; Ram et al., 2013; Yin et al., 2014). Regarding the process group Communication (CmM), several authors stress the need for effective communication, not only among the project team elements, but also with the other stakeholders, as well as the strategy and channels of communication, and the quality of the information communicated (Brun, 2011; Chen, 2012; Chow and Cao, 2008; Denolf et al., 2015; Dinter, 2013; Farzin et al., 2014; Ismail et al., 2012; Nasir and Sahibuddinm, 2011; Morlhon et al., 2014).

As aforementioned, the process group Procurement (PM) is the one that contributes with fewer processes to success. In the literature, few studies analyse these processes as predictors of success, and the existing studies just refer to the importance of vendor support during project development and implementation (Chen et al., 2012; Dinter, 2013; Farzin et al., 2014).

The success of IS projects has been a hot topic in the literature for a long time. However, the reported success can be biased because it often only concerns software development (technical) projects, not enterprise IS (socio-technical) projects.

Our survey results show that IS projects are currently achieving high levels of success, which is in clear contrast to what is reported in the literature, probably because, as discussed, the research is usually focused on software development projects and the notion of success can be different.

Furthermore, this research also shows that overall project success is influenced by 38 project management processes out of 47 ISO 21500/PMBOK processes. Nevertheless, when we consider success as project scope, time, and cost fulfilled without deviation (simultaneously), the number of differentiating processes is 21, of which clearly stand out quality and risk management processes. These are some of the processes least put in practice, but our research shows that they are fundamental for achieving higher levels of success. According to Kerzner (2019), the implementation of project management processes is related to higher maturity levels of project management. Overall, higher levels of success are achieved by organizations with higher project management maturity, i.e. organizations that put into practice a complete set of project management processes from all the relevant knowledge areas.

Our study has important practical, educational, and research implications, because it stresses the relevance of the use of good practices (e.g. ISO 21500/21502 and PMBOK processes) for achieving success in project management. Furthermore, the results obtained highlight the importance of a competent and thorough project management approach that encompasses all the relevant processes and not just a few. One avenue for future research is to study the influence of project management processes on the success of projects in other industries. It would also be important to consider the impact of variables such as project manager training and experience, and contextual variables on the execution of IS project management processes, and consequently, on project success.