Project Management
Project management is a cyclical process with overlapping stages feeding back and forth in the course of project completion. The complex task of managing projects is frequently tackled with the aid of the Project Management Cycle (PMC), which is also used
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1 Introduction Projects represent the commitment of human and physical resources to produce specific outputs in a given time and budget framework.1 Projects have five main attributes. They are as follows2: • unique in their specific end product such that each project is of a different nature, among others, including variations of scale, scope and resource demands; • temporary with a definite beginning and end; • iterative and developed during their progression when details become clearer or circumstances change; • funded by a primary project sponsor providing direction to the project, who gives decision-making authority to the project manager; and • uncertain, due to their interplay with reality and their uniqueness, as well as no certain best plan and no guarantee for steadiness of the environment and/or stakeholders. Project management has several stages forming a continuous process within which one builds upon the other.3 Ideally, the five stages should be carried out in the following order: needs assessment, project design and planning, proposal writing,
1 FA, Project Cycle Management Technical Guide, p. 11, http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/ak211e/ ak211e00.pdf. 2 Schwalbe (2009). 3 United Nations Development Programme (2009).
S. Herold (*) • B.W. Pennink University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 H.-J. Heintze, P. Thielbo¨rger (eds.), International Humanitarian Action, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-14454-2_21
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implementation, as well as monitoring and evaluation.4 In reality, deviations are the norm, and thus over time, the subsequent stages will feed back into the former generating a feedback loop correcting for project changes.5 The structure outlined above and applied in this chapter is also referred to as the PMC.6 Each of its steps is discussed in more detail within this chapter. The first stages of the PMC, i.e. from project identification up to and including proposal writing, are most crucial as only their successful completion can propel projects into the implementation phase. It is very important to note that every project exists to satisfy a certain need. Only where an assessment clearly points to the need for a specific project should subsequent PMC steps be conducted. Due to the highly dynamic environment prevailing in situations where humanitarian assistance is required, projects often fail due to incompetent needs analyses prior to implementation. An example where well-intentioned actions have had negative impacts is an NGO executing food for work programmes in Haiti with the aim of facilitating access to basic needs while unintentionally causing harm to the local economy.7 The latter stages of the PMC from implementation up to and including evaluation will show whether the project can achieve its milestones and develop an end product and sustainability objectives.8 Within the framework of project management activities, there are nine knowledge manageme
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