Most information shown, created by the Standish Group, about the core elements of project success / failure base themselves on the information dating from 1994.
The Standish Group has renewed their Chaos top 10, as can be downloaded here.
In short it contains the following:
1. CHAOS TOP 10
- Executive Support
- User Involvement
- Experienced Project Manager
- Clear Business Objectives
- Minimized Scope (instead of small iterations)
- Standard Software Struture
- Firm Basic Requirements
- Formal Methodology
- Reliable Estimates
- Other
2. The kind of skills that are required for each role, to tackle the top 10
3. Ingredients for a succesful project:
- Reducing Requirements to the bare minimum
- Constant communication systems
- Standard infrastructure
- Good stakeholders
- Iterative development process
- Project management tooling
- Adherence to key roles