Factors influencing perceived project success in large R&D projects: An exploratory study

Within large R&D projects, a variety of known and unknown problems and difficulties in collaboration may occur, which affect how the success of a project status is perceived. In the context of the large scale software research and development project "Alliance Digital Product Flow", multiple partners from research and industry with a heterogeneous background worked together to develop new methods and technologies in the field of internet of things. We conducted a survey among the project participants near the end of the project. The survey questions were derived from factors influencing project success which we found during literature analysis expanded by project specific information built based on the analysis of a previous survey. The study goal was to analyze the current status of perceived project success and the magnitude of the impact of different factors influencing it, such as communication, collaboration, work experience and perceived success of the requirements engineering process in order to derive recommendations for future projects. Moreover, we explore the impact of further factors that may influence perceived project success using path analysis. Our long-term objective is to obtain a validated measurement instrument that could be applied during and after finishing a project.