"Total Project Cost Success Factors" by Elhami B. Nasr, James Diekmann, and John A. Kuprenas
Today’s managers typically use different project control systems and techniques (earned value and variance calculations) to measure the health of project performance and to ensure project success. However, project performance evaluation and analysis are mostly done in an ad-hoc manner (shotgun fashion).
Even when post-project reviews are employed they are after the fact and the results are usually does not lead to full understanding of projects poor performance and how they could be avoided on future projects. Also needed is a systematic approach to capture the causes of project’s poor performance in a timely manner. This will help us in establishing a set of action guidelines to provide cost management direction at all phases of a project, for a variety of projects types, using Pareto analysis of completed project cost control data. These action guidelines can be called critical project success factors (CPSF).