  Determining the factors that have an influence on software systems
development and deployment project outcomes has been the focus of extensive and
ongoing research for more than 30 years. We provide here a survey of the
research literature that has addressed this topic in the period 1996-2006, with
a particular focus on empirical analyses. On the basis of this survey we
present a new classification framework that represents an abstracted and
synthesized view of the types of factors that have been asserted as influencing
project outcomes.
