Project evaluation is essential to understand and assess the key aspects of a project that make it either a success or failure. The latter is influenced by a large number of factors, and many times it is hard to measure them objectively. This paper addresses this by introducing a new method for identifying and assessing key project characteristics, which are crucial for a project's success. The method consists of a number of well-defined steps, which are described in detail. The method is applied to two case studies from different application domains and continents. It is concluded that patterns are possible to detect from the data sets. Further, the analysis of the two data sets shows that the proposed method using subjective factors is useful, since it provides an increased understanding, insight and assessment of which project factors might affect project success.