Most literature in project management suggests that project success and failure should be measured by the project manager's ability to meet cost, quality and time objectives. However, the concept of project success and failure remains ambiguous and ill defined. This paper presents the results of an empirical study investigating the project outcome criteria that project managers perceive as salient for categorising the project outcome. A survey was carried out to gather data from project managers in IT projects for the purpose of testing their perceptions about how project success and failure is actually judged.