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.