Critical Success Factors Influencing The Performance of Development Projects: An Empirical Study of Constituency Development Fund Projects In Kenya
The motivation for this work emanates from a related study carried out by Ngacho and Das (2014) which revolves around identification of key performance indicators (KPIs) of development projects. The present work attempts to identify critical success factors (CSFs) influencing the performance of development projects based on their KPIs. In order to achieve this, it has considered the case of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) projects constructed between 2003 and 2011 in Kenya, and secured the viewpoints of 175 respondents comprising clients, consultants and contractors involved in the implementation of CDF projects, with regard to their perceptions of 30 success variables. A five-point Likert scale was used as a response format for different variables with the assigned values ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to the collected data which gave rise to an instrument consisting of 26 items representing six factors. These six factors essentially represent six CSFs namely project-related, client-related, consultant-related, contractor-related, supply chain-related, and external environment-related factor. Subsequently this six-factor 26-item instrument was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) which finally resulted in a six-factor, 18-item instrument. Relevant statistical tests including reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity were conducted to prove the robustness of the scale. The findings of this study are also relevant to development projects undertaken in other developing countries.