The fundamental problem is the same as with business and management research - any useful signal is completely drowned in an ocean of noise. Success of a project depends on the characters of the people involved, connections of the project lead, market timing, sources of funding, luck, current phase of the business cycle, past project experience, marketing and hype, sales teams, relatedness of icons and animations, etc. - more so than on any technical or organizational factor. I've yet to work on a project where technical reasons were at the root cause of the lack of success