Purpose – Existing models of critical success factors of software projects have less concentration on communication, team, project management and product related factors. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of critical success factors (CSFs) for software development projects, categorize the success factors, finding the factors in each category and highlighting the product, team, project management and communication factors as important categories of success factors for software projects. Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual model and seven categories of success factors comprising a total of 80 success factors for software development projects were identified based on the thorough literature review. These 80 factors are collected based on their importance to software projects and their repeated occurrence in the literature related to CSFs. Based on the occurrence of the success factor in the literature, each category comprising top five success factors are identified as critical success factors for software projects. Based on these seven categories of success factors a conceptual model was developed. Findings – A total of 35 CSFs from seven CSF categories are identified from secondary research of the CSFs for software development projects. The identified CSFs include communication in project, top management support, clear project goal, reliability of output, project planning, teamwork, project team coordination, quality control, client acceptance, accuracy of output, reduce ambiguity, maximize stability, realistic expectations and user involvement. Project management, product, team and communication factors are identified as important categories of success factors for software projects. Research limitations/implications – Different categories of critical success factors such as product, project management, team and communication, which were not highlighted or categorized earlier in the literature are discussed in this current work. Practical implications – This research is definitely useful for organizations working on software projects. The project managers working in the industry can benefit from the mentioned critical success factors and the categories of factors by concentration on them while planning and executing software projects. Originality/value – The conceptual model, categorization of CSFs, identifying 35 CSFs for software projects and highlighting product, team and communication factors are major contributions of this research work.
