Business managers, who initiate and fund projects, can normally define quite clearly what the objectives of the project are and when it is deemed to be a success. In addition to quality, these typically may imply one or more of the attributes of cost, schedule, and scope. However, Project Managers (PMs) typically ignore these "Key Success Factors (KSFs)" of a project, when managing it. PMs typically work towards ensuring a bunch of deliverables. While no project is complete without delivering the envisaged product, there are important differences in approach, when managing to the KSFs of a Project.

The vast majority of us have to live in a world of finite resources. This is true at all levels of human activity - an individual, team, project, group, company, conglomerate, or nation. By definition, this implies that trade-offs and choices are part of our everyday life, more so, in the world of project management. Be it small or large, simple or complex, all projects require a constant stream of decisions on resource-related issues. And here, resources include the traditional parameters such as time, material, people and money. However, underlying the above parameters are the two pillars of quality and scope.

The development organization has the constant desire to deliver the most elegant solution. And projects are, therefore, managed to ensure this. On the other hand, the business side of the organization may have other parameters by which they measure the success of the project. This, in turn, may demand that the project be managed differently. So, while engineers may think that zero defects should be the hallmark of any delivery, business may need projects to be delivered to a specific date in order to ensure that the product hits a market window.

A common fallacy amongst project teams is to try and identify every risk in a project and then manage what they think are the most important at that point in the life cycle of the project. This is neither feasible nor necessary. If one can live with a risk, why try and mitigate it?

This article introduces the reader to ideas on how to manage projects based on what is vital to a project. Every project must have so called "Key Success Factors" (KSFs) that all stakeholders in the project agree to. All parts of the organization must then work towards ensuring that the project operates in a way to optimize the KSFs.

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