Critical success factor (CSF) is the term for an element that is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. It is a critical factor or activity required for ensuring the success of a company or an organization. The term was initially used in the world of data analysis, and business analysis. For example, a CSF for a successful Information Technology (IT) project is user involvement.
"Critical success factors are those few things that must go well to ensure success for a manager or an organization, and, therefore, they represent those managerial or enterprise area, that must be given special and continual attention to bring about high performance. CSFs include issues vital to an organization's current operating activities and to its future success."
Critical success factors should not be confused with success criteria; those are outcomes of a project or achievements of an organization that are needed to consider the project a success or to esteem the organization successful. Success criteria are defined with the objectives and may be quantified by KPIs.
Read more about Critical Success Factor: Concept History, Relation To Key Performance Indicator
Famous quotes containing the words critical, success and/or factor:
“Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters’ lengthening flight. When they need us, we are fiercely there. But we do not need them to need us—or to become us.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded.... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)