The notion of success and failure in software projects are confusing. Failure is often considered in the context of the iron triangle as the inability to meet time, cost and performance constraints. Yet, while there is a consensus around the prevalence of project failure, new projects seem destined to repeat past mistakes. This paper tries to advance the discussion by offering a new perspective for reasoning about the meaning of success and the different types of software project failures. The paper advocates rising beyond the fixation with internal parameters of efficiency. It begins by discussing the limited insights from existing project failure surveys, before offering a four level model addressing the essence of successful delivery and operation in software projects and considering the different measures required in order to utilise richer measurements of success
