Research on Why IT Projects Fail

I am currently working on a dissertation for a doctoral program at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan.   My research topic will be centered around why IT projects fail.

I did a quick search on "Why Project Fail?" and the number of links about this topic was about 355 using the google search engine. 

In doing the literature review there are a lot of articles about this subject.  Many practioners, managers, CIO's, CEO's are asking the same questions. Why do we have a large percentage of projects that fail.

In order to determine why project fail, my reaction is to pose another questions. What makes IT Projects successful.  And if we know what makes a project successful, can we prepare processes and procedures that will minimize the number of IT Project Failures.

In looking at this from another angle; that is to define what is an IT project success and what is an IT project failure.  

Over the years, many people have used the phrase "Chritical Success Factor".   What is a critical success factor and how can you use them to make IT projects successful.

More to come about this subject.