What makes the definition of Project Success?

What makes projects successful? Many project managers will say:

Time, budget and quality.

Are that all? How about the following situation?

1. Initial problems or objectives for project justification are not solved or achieved.

2. Project sponsor and key stakeholders do not look good.

3. Customers’ satisfaction is not achieved or cannot be defined.

Imagine, if the project is supposed to deliver a sales system. The system is delivered on-time, within budget, and with expected quality and performance. However, what if:

1. The number of customers is not increased;

2. The yearly overhead is higher;

3. New promotion of products cannot be handled.

Then most of the PMs will say, "hey, those are not my problems ... I should not be blamed ..."

Of course, every reasonable people will agree with that, just that the customer is still not "happy" with the result, they still think that the project is not that "successful" ... is it a fair comment?

Yes, if we are talking about the definition of success of project, we can qualify that those problems or effects after the project delivery are not the PM's fault. But, that is the project objectives definition problem. The expectation out of the project should be clearly communicated during project initiation stage. If the PM is involved in the initiation stage, he/she should take initiatives to ensure the objectives are "defined" or "quantified" as much as possible. Take the business risks into consideration. Then the priorities of objectives can be a decision point for the project scope, timeline and quality expectation. A lot of human interaction here ... not only about the tripple constraints!