What makes a software company and its projects successful?

Friday my boss gathered all developers and told us to drop her a note about our opinion on the issue of "What are developers' responsibilities and how to reinforce them". The subtopic was how to stimulate us to give our best. Of course, it is not difficult to see that the real questions is how to bring projects to success (and why some projects fail). This is a question that has been bothering me a for a long time and I've probably read hundreds of articles what makes a company and its projects successful. The famous Joel Spolsky has some good articles on this topic and his ideas shaped most of my beliefs.

So I summarized all things from my experience and the ideas of other authorities to produce a 9 page long essay which I named "Why Projects Succeed or Fail? Motivation and Responsibility" (it is actually written in Bulgarian). I started it Friday and finished it Sunday for a total of 7-8 hours of writing, including its several revisions. I had a great time doing this and I am pretty comfortable with the results. My cousin Valentin, who is a web developer, read it and found my points very sound. Let's see what my boss will think of them. She probably expects something short and sweet, but there are no short answers to difficult questions. I hope she will have enough time and patience to appreciate this work of art :).

If anyone is interested in reading my essay I will have first to remove the company-related information and then to send it to you. But this can't happen in the following 3 days since I will be outside Sofia (no, I am not hiding for my birthday). So, Thursday I'm back to work. Till then don't waste your time to check for new posts.