TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
Project Management in International NGOs: a crossroads
First of all, I would just like to say a few words to introduce myself. My name is
John Cropper and I run one of Oxfam GB’s global programmes – a global
programme on governance and women’s rights with projects in 19 countries. I
am also a Trustee of Anti Slavery International. I have represented Oxfam
GB on PM4NGOs since the group was set up and I started up the PM4NGOs
group on linkedin since last December and the group has as of today more
than 450 members. I promise that I am not going to bore you all this morning
talking about project management processes, sub-processes, critical path
analysis, stage plans or Gantt charts (and I promise not to mention process
maps). I am going to talk about how I see project management in our sector
and I hope to convey some of my passion for the subject and share with you
why I think it is so important and what I feel we can do about it.
This talk uses the words “crossroads” in its title quite intentionally. I will argue
that projects form the lifeblood of international NGOs. As the vast majority of
evaluations show, we have managed projects indifferently at best and
effective project management does not appear to form part of our delivery
paradigm. As a sector, we need to make a choice – hence the cross roads –
we can stay as we are and deal with the consequences of loss of resources,
loss of reputation and risk (particularly as we have seen in places like
Afghanistan and Iraq, there are other types of organisations, including the
military and private sector contracting firms, competing for, and winning,
humanitarian contracts). Or we can change and learn what other sectors have
already learned – that project management is a vital skill for effective delivery
and if we don’t have effective delivery of our projects, we have nothing.
First up, I’d like to deal with the centrality of projects to international NGOs –
which I’ll call iNGOs from now on. INGOs run projects continuously. They may
or may not recognise this, but they do. Projects are central to iNGO work. In
many organisations, about 75% of the international budget is project based.
INGO literature is full of the language of projects: we recruit project officers,
write project proposals, evaluate projects, attract funding and supporters by
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
showcasing successful projects and indeed we are contracted by donors to
manage projects on their behalf. In fact, if we define a project as a set of
activities meeting agreed objectives in a specific period of time with an agreed
set of resources, it is quite difficult to see much international iNGO work,
which is isn’t either a project or programme or which supports projects and
programmes. Emergency response – it’s clearly finite, timebound, has specific
objectives and resources. So does rehabilitation. So too does long term
development, advocacy and campaigning work. The timescales will be
different, the way resources are used will be different. Our success will be
measured in terms of measuring outcomes more than outputs – but they are
all projects. If we search any donor website, or any iNGO website, the
language used, sometimes even the structure will be around projects.
Programmes, projects, goals, objectives, budgets, milestones are common
currency. If we’re not running projects, we need to ask what are we doing,
why are we doing it and probably, how soon can we stop doing it. But, we can
ask: so what? INGOs are project organisations, they run projects – so what –
nothing very controversial about this – in fact many iNGOs will say that they
manage projects very well in very difficult circumstances. To some extent,
they have a point. Staff suffering from post-traumatic stress doesn’t make it on
to the risk register of most private and public sector projects. Many iNGOs are
managing projects in incredibly difficult circumstances. You may be working in
very difficult socio- political environments. Project managers like to talk about
time and cost. Well, at the beginning of an emergency response, you probably
won’t have a complete picture of the money or staff available to a project. You
probably won’t know the timescale and in the case of an emergency, there is
enormous pressure to act immediately as delays can cost lives.
INGO project managers also focus not just on output and outcomes – but also
on impact as well. Impact assessment is like business benefits realisation on
steroids. Tools such as logical frameworks have been refined to really help
managers understand the logical chain linking activities to impact. In this,
iNGOs are arguably ahead of the public and private sectors and almost
certainly have a lot to offer.
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
So – iNGOs manage lots of projects, they work in difficult circumstances and
they are quite good at designing projects to achieve outcomes and impact
rather than a more mechanical focus on outputs.
So, so what what’s the big deal. Here’s the big deal. I had a look at data from
one organisation – and I would like to stress very strongly that this is not the
problem of any one organisation – and I found that over a one year period:

65 programmes were over allocated by more than 10% – meaning that the
sum of the project budgets was bigger than the programme budget

70 programmes were overspent by more than 10%.

235 projects were overspent by more than 10%.

The amount of project overspend was over £15 million.

At the end of that year, 70% of projects had at least one overdue
milestone.
It’s worth dwelling on this for a little and thinking about each organisation
present and how this might apply to them.
It seems that as iNGOs, we make a large investment in project design – in
other words at the beginning of the project cycle and we have a variety of
tools, such as logframes to help. We then have a large investment at the end
of the project in monitoring and evaluation. There seems to a void in the
middle on actual project delivery and many evaluations pick up on this and
criticise poor delivery and implementation.
I mentioned at the start that I run the PM4NGOs group on linkedin and my
involvement with the PM4NGOs initiative. This means that I have spoken
about project management in iNGOs with a lot of people from a lot of different
organisations. In this time, I have heard nothing – I repeat – nothing to
indicate that this is not a sector-wide problem. I have had conversations with
many programme staff who are worried about the situation and/or who are
trying to improve the way their agency manages its projects. It's quite funny,
actually – I have had people write or call – and they ask, “have you cracked it”
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
or “do you know anyone who has”. It is if there is a secret society of iNGO
workers who are working undercover to improve project management in their
organisations. Maybe we should have a secret handshake or codewords or
something. When I talk about it with them, they cite a fairly similar list of
problems.

Project management is not a major priority for organisations

Lip service being paid to project management

There is no clear allocation of responsibilities for project management

There is no clear awareness of what good quality project management is

There are few resources available for training

There are no clear standards or guidance
And I would add one factor from my own experience: project management is
usually considered to be one and the same as line management. This means
that a project manager gets promoted to a programme coordinator – then to a
programme manager/deputy country manager or whatever. So, just as a
project manager starts to develop some experience, they are taken off
actually managing projects. In effect, our most junior, least experienced staff
are actually managing our core business units – our projects. I think this is
symptomatic of something bigger. Project management is invisible as a
discipline within the sector. I have heard senior staff say show me the
logframe when asked to show a project plan. And why not? If you have not
been exposed to what professional project management is – why should you
know the difference?
Let’s look at these in some more detail. One way of looking at this is thinking
what an organisation would be like if project management were a priority. I
think there would be a shared understanding of the role and importance of
project management and project managers in the organisations. Project
managers would have appropriate skills and professional development. There
would be clear sets of guidance and standards for project managers. Larger
organisations would even have Project Management Offices or some
equivalent to ensure consistency and support project managers.
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
Organisational systems and procedures would support effective project
delivery. I can think of no organisation that has much, or even any, of this.
A couple of years ago, within my organisation, I tried to find out how many
members of staff, designated as managing projects actually had “Project
Manager” in their job title. I found three. We have “Project Officers”,
“Programme Coordinators” – in fact there were more thematic leads on
anything from livelihoods to governance managing projects than actual project
managers. Well, again, so what? Maybe the names are different, but the
functions are the same – as we have seen – these organisations manage
projects. Maybe there are Project Management Offices? Where does project
management sit in iNGOs? If there is clear leadership and structure, then
perhaps job titles don’t matter. Again, I think the results are similar. Project
management usually doesn’t sit in any clear place in most iNGO structures.
When it does, it is most commonly as a subset of Monitoring and Evaluation
Departments. But this is quite rare. Most of the time, project management
forms part of line management and managing programmes and projects is
simply another task to be performed. It is hard to see in the world of
international development, from looking at organisational structure any clear
indication that project management has been a major organisational priority.
Again, it is worth asking: so what? What matters is that projects are well run. If
project managers are line managers, but they have the necessary skills,
structures and systems – the projects will be well managed. It doesn’t matter if
there is no Project Management Office or equivalent. It doesn't matter if they
aren't called project managers. What matters is that the projects are well run.
Let’s start with skills. In the UK and US, in the private sector and increasingly
the public sector, if you’re not PMP or Prince 2 qualified, you won’t get shortlisted for a project management job. My own experience is when I tell iNGO
staff that I am Prince 2 qualified, they don’t know what I am talking about. If
you talk about work breakdown structures, people seem to think you are
talking about health and safety! A search in one iNGO revealed 4 overseas
project managers with some recognised project management qualification.
Very often, IT Departments are the places where greatest awareness of
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project management qualifications exists. I have often heard fundraisers
complain that they have to put project plans together in order to get project
ideas past donor scrutiny.
What frequently happens is that iNGOs recruit specialists in a thematic area.
A new hire may have very considerable expertise in food security or
governance. They are recruited and then are required to manage projects.
They work hard with what they know, get promoted and then recruit people
with similar skill sets to themselves. The competence set around thematic
knowledge gets broader and deeper. The project management competence
set stays where it is. Even if more junior project staff have project
management experience, it’s often not well used because their manager
doesn’t understand it – both get frustrated, and often qualified project
managers leave the sector in frustration before they even get an opportunity
to draw on their own relevant experiences to influence better practice.
One interesting phenomenon that shows the value given to project
management in some organisations is that there seems to be an assumption
that anyone can do it. You just pick it up. Osmosis is the main development
technique. There would be outrage if took a project manager and said from
now on, you are going to be a public health advisor. We won't train you, we
haven't got a set of standards, there isn't an agreed methodology. We have a
handbook that covers everything – have a look at that. I'm sure you'll do fine.
This is exactly how we treat many of our project managers. Serendipity,
osmosis and a considerable amount of optimism seem to be our guiding
lights.
It is difficult to find any common methodology for project management across
organisations or even within organisations. We can see “project cycle
management”, “project management”, “programme cycle management” and
probably a lot more. No common definitions, no common standards but lots of
diagrams of cycles, circles and spirals. However, as one of PM4NGOs
members on linkedin says,
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“The real problem is …. the tendency to continue requesting a perpetual string
of follow on projects that may indeed be triggered or facilitated by a cyclic
perception of change (among donors and requestors alike). The cycle is
convenient for large NGOs, consultancy companies and even donors that
have a tendency to factor in their own survival, bypassing accountability. I've
seen threats, which could have been addressed in the project, deliberately
reduced to assumptions/risks to increase chances of a follow on
project/phase”.
Accountability is central and I will be returning to this later. In fact, as part of
accountability efforts, the humanitarian sector has developed very good
minimum quality standards for humanitarian response – the SPHERE project.
There are chapters on thematic areas from Food Aid to Water and Sanitation.
The first chapter covers “Minimum Standards Common to all Sectors” – but
there is barely a mention of project management. It is almost as if it is taken
for granted that agencies already know how to do this. This is a pity as
agencies commit to holding themselves accountable to following SPHERE
standards and it seems strange that we hold ourselves to account for
everything in the emergency response except the control of plans, activities,
budgets, milestones and actual delivery. HAP – the humanitarian
accountability project doesn’t talk much, if anything, about project
management even though it is supposed to be THE sector-wide accountability
standard.When looking at UN Reform and the cluster system – there is no
Programme Management cluster, and successive reports variously cite
programme integration and management as weaknesses.
.
In the case of much development and campaigning work and increasingly
humanitarian work, local NGOs are actually implementing projects on behalf
of iNGOs. We give grants, manage donor contracts and support the local
organisations as they deliver. So, if these organisations deliver, how well
placed are they to deliver efficiently and effectively? Without the benefit of any
real research, it is difficult to say – but if the organisations that are supposed
to be accompanying and supporting seem not to be aware of project
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management as a discipline, it seems fair to assume that this is also true of
local NGOs.
Additionally, without common standards and approaches, even when you get
PMP and/or Prince 2 qualified project managers together in a programme
team within an iNGO, you can find that no-one speaks exactly the same
language and everyone is simply bringing what they learned from their last job
together. In an emergency response, where time wasted usually means lives
lost, time needs to be spent creating some internal understanding about
project management – which then has to be repeated the next time and the
next and so on.
What about systems support to project management? How well do finance
and IT systems support projects? Anecdotally, the evidence is not
encouraging. Project plans and budgets are developed around activities. This
is why pretty much all donor proposals insist on activity based plans and
budgets. I do not know of any organisation that provides consistent system
support to this and I wouldn't like to ask how many organisations have a
dashboard overview of project deliverables – and given that projects are our
lifeblood – I find this surprising and it raises questions over effective
accountability. How can we really be accountable for delivery if no-one really
knows what we are doing? Most organisations corporate financial accounting
systems are geared towards financial reporting to satisfy legal requirements
and do not have systems that join up projects and budgets – i.e. management
accounting, (let alone schedules, human resource management, supply chain
management and risk) - and those that do often have line item accounting
type budgets which are not at all helpful to a project manager to monitor and
manage in a meaningful way on a day to day basis. This means that finance
staff usually keep project budgets in parallel spreadsheet systems with all the
risks that this entails (project managers, who nominally have responsibility for
projects, often have almost no visibility of the kinds of information required to
manage their projects effectively). Systems, though – by themselves will
achieve nothing. If project management processes are poor, computers will
make them go quicker and so you move from blissful ignorance to chaos! In
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any case, if project management skills are weak, it will be difficult to make full
use of system support.
Putting this together means that you could almost say that there is an
institutional blind spot in iNGOs around project management as a professional
discipline and it is very difficult to argue – given this situation - that project
management is a clear organisational priority for the sector. Project
management doesn’t really seem to form part of how iNGOs see their delivery
of projects in the field. It is not part of the existing delivery paradigm.
Why is this, if projects are so central to these organisations? Why is there an
organisational blind spot? Why do organisations not appear to value project
management as a discipline in the way they value water engineers,
logisticians or gender experts? Why are there so few qualified project
managers in iNGOs and what does this actually matter?
I think it matters a great deal, and I believe it should matter to all of us. Good
quality, professional project management is not a magic solution to the world’s
problems. It won’t end poverty and suffering overnight and it won’t solve
management problems for either iNGOs or donors. What an agreed, sectorwide approach to project management can offer is the ability to use funds and
resources to best effect. It can enable effective, inclusive definition, planning
and management of projects and project stages and above all it can ensure
clear accountability for project deliverables.
Of course, there are outstanding project managers in every iNGO who do a lot
of this already. I believe we need to move beyond “heroic” project
management and find ways to deliver consistently within and across
organisations. We work with many of the poorest people in the world and I
believe we need to do what we have said we would do, when we said we
would do it, in the way that we promised and within the agreed costs. In short,
an agreed, sector-wide approach to project management can help us to keep
the promises that we make to the people who need us most.
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Let’s look at the money – using “funds and resources” sounds a bit pompous.
I have got tired of the number of times I have heard people talk about “no cost
extensions”. When I worked through a project schedule with one team and
they realised that they couldn’t possibly finish on time, they said it didn’t
matter as the donor would give them a “no cost extension”. This term is
symptomatic of much that to my mind is wrong about the how we manage
projects. A “no cost extension”, means simply that the donor agrees to extend
the end date but will not provide any further funding. I asked the staff if this
meant that they would work for free. They looked fairly surprised at this but
the point I was making is that a “no cost extension” is fictitious. Someone,
somewhere pays. In this case, it means that the money comes from the
iNGOs own funds. This usually means from someone who has given a small
donation – in the hope that we would use their money well – not to subsidize
our lack of planning and management.
So – how big is the problem? Well – I gave you some statistics at the
beginning and it doesn’t do any harm to repeat them.

65 programmes were over allocated by more than 10% – meaning that the
sum of the project budgets was bigger than the programme budget

70 programmes were overspent by more than 10%.

235 projects were overspent by more than 10%.

The amount of project overspend was over £15 million.

At the end of that year, 70% of projects had at least one overdue
milestone.
What does this actually mean – in the end it means risk. You often see – for
example – overspends balanced by underspends somewhere else – and
often under-appreciated finance staff doing a desperate juggling act in the
background to make sure that the organisation doesn’t overspend as a whole,
while the people actually spending the money continue to do so without
recognising, or being held responsible for, their poor management. But
depending on serendipity as a project management methodology doesn’t
strike me as a good way to managing anything. In addition to risk, it means
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
poor accountability. Accountability is a large and complex field in its own right.
But I do not think it is controversial to say that if we do not do what we said we
were going to do, if we spend more than we said we would, if we are late – or
even if organisational awareness is such that no clear picture is possible i.e.
we don't know where we are – then we haven't even got to an accountability
first base.
I wonder what would happen if this were in the private sector? What action
would be taken? Would this be a board issue? Who would be waking up at
night worrying about this? How often do iNGO Boards discuss project
management and actually doing what say we are doing? How often do
regulators discuss this? If Trustees – and I speak as one - are not actively
considering how to improve project delivery – what are they doing?
So – let us be clear – there is a problem. When we look at the money, it is
worth noting that some donors are already starting to vote with their feet and
subcontract grant management to private sector companies – notably
consultancies – as they have a reputation for good project management. This
means that resources that should be going to help the world’s poorest are
effectively tied up in bureaucracy as a result of the perception of our inability
to manage.
Effective project management is not a panacea and will not make resources
be used perfectly, eliminate fraud or guarantee results. I believe, however that
being clear cross the organisation’s operations about what we are going to do,
who is going to do it, why we are doing it, how we are going to do it, how we
will know when we have done it, how much it will cost and by when we will
finish, would allow us to work from a position of strength.
Imagine being a Programme Director and looking at the statistics I mentioned.
Where do you start? And it is worth mentioning that these statistics don't even
look at the opportunity cost of not fulfilling the full value of a contract. A lot of
people may feel that, “we don't do things that way round here”. I hope not –
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
but I would urge you to ask your fundraisers, your logisticians, finance staff
and auditors and see what they have to say.
It is quite easy to present a lot of information that creates the impression that
the situation is terrible and sound like chicken little. I believe though, that in
the majority of cases, senior staff don't really know what the situation is – or
indeed – how bad it is. Despite this, some organisations have tried to do
something. A couple have attempted to train a few people in PMP or Prince 2,
then they set them loose and wonder why they fail. Other organisations bring
in consultants to give them a project management methodology – usually
copied and pasted from Prince 2 or Project Management Institute Manuals – a
few people are trained and then they too fail. Some organisations have gone
for systems first – and then wondered why people never use them.
There isn't space to talk about why this situation has developed – clearly the
history of the development sector plays a major role – but I also feel that the
external environment and especially the funding environment has been very
forgiving. It is very easy to feel sympathy for iNGOs and their workers. Staff
often work in difficult and dangerous conditions. In an emergency, speed is
essential, delays can cost lives and a lack of information is the norm rather
than the rule. Maybe because of this, actual delivery of projects has not had a
great deal of scrutiny. Press coverage of unambiguously poor project
management has been muted – even when there has been any criticism. We
didn't do what we said we would, but – hey - we did good work in difficult
conditions. And this is true, iNGOs do good and they do work in difficult
conditions.
But I believe that it is precisely because we do work for the poor and
marginalised that we owe it to them to manage projects well. We owe it to
them to do what we have told them we would do. We owe it to them to finish
when we said we would. Above all, we owe it to them to operate as efficiently
and effectively as possible so that as much money as possible is used to
alleviate poverty and suffering.
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
In addition, perhaps more than most sectors, we manage other people's
money – taxpayer's money via Government agencies or ministries as well as
individual people's donations. When we think of donations, it is easy to think
of wealthy people who give much. Let's also remember quite poor people who
give small amounts – which represent a much greater share of their income.
We owe it to them to use our – their resources wisely and to best possible
effect.
So what should we do about this? Tolstoy said, rather aptly for development
organisations, that, “everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks
of changing himself”. I think this hints at where we need to go. Sending a few
– or even a lot of people - on training courses by itself won't help much.
Spending lots of money on new IT systems may give an illusion of activity but
won't make much difference. So what will:

I think that senior managers, Trustees and regulators need to understand
what is at stake. There needs to be an acceptance that project
management is a profession and that verifiable standards do exist. Good
is simply not good enough if wish to make good on our promises to the
poor. Trustees especially should want to know how many projects have
overspent, how many are late and – what is the Director doing about it.
This would help us move away from lip service or tokenism.

Organisations need to look at project management standards and then
stop and think. Lock step application of any methodology from page 1 to
the end will fail. It will mire everyone in bureaucracy and make change
even more difficult. Organisations need to look at project management
methodologies and work out the best way to apply them to their
organisation. Leave out some parts. Take it in stages. Try out some pilots.
Keep it simple. Create successes. Work out how this is helping.

Top managers of iNGOs need to create institution-wide environments
which include culture, systems and processes conducive to effective
project management, as well as ensuring that the people implementing
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TITLE: Project Management in NGOs: a crossroads
projects are properly skilled. Senior Managers themselves need to know
what to expect from their project managers, and have the skills, mindsets
and appropriate mix of carrots and sticks to ensure that standards, when
defined, can be, and are, met.

There needs to be a clear allocation of responsibility for project
management in every organisation. Someone needs to hold responsibility
and the process needs to be resourced. Someone needs to be held to
account if this fails. At which point everyone says - “ but it is too
expensive”. Compared with what I would reply. Going back to the statistics
– a tiny fraction of that overspend or those delays would pay for a world
class training programme. But I think it is also worth mentioning that any
costs need to be set against our need to be accountable for what we do to
the people who give us money and the people we serve for what we do.

Once priority has been established and responsibility is clear then I feel
that introducing project management should be dealt with as a project in
its own right – with clear deliverables, deadlines, budgets and critically
business benefits. If we think that this is going to make a difference, we
should have the courage to say how we will measure this.

I think that the sector badly needs a clear set of standards. How much
money and time is wasted by every organisation writing its own version? I
believe with all my heart that what is being proposed today – a three level
curriculum and qualification framework can form the bedrock of this. If this
works, then there will be one language of project management across
organisations.

It could, and I believe should, also help the sector towards valuing project
managers as skilled professionals, whose skills and expertise is mission
critical.

A clear set of standards and an affordable qualification pathway should
also empower our capacity building efforts of local NGOs in developing
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countries. The only reason that justifies the presence of an iNGO is a
specific lack of capacity, and there are few capacities more important than
the ability to deliver effectively and efficiently.

Above all, we need to move away from reliance on osmosis and
serendipity and a culture of “it'll be all right on the night”. Organisations
which have started trying to improve project delivery need to get behind
the people who are trying to do it. They need to be backed and supported.
Organisations that have yet to start need to wake up. Put simply, I believe
that the stakes are too high to fail.
Finally I would like us all to reflect and consider all that I have said from the
perspective of a beneficiary – let us imagine a woman living in extreme
poverty in a difficult and dangerous country. What does she think about this?
What would she say about how we manage our projects, if we asked?
I don’t like to talk about problems, without also offering solutions. What we are
going to be discussing today is not the whole solution, but it is a significant
first step forward. I invite you all to become part of what a relatively small
number of committed people comprising PM4NGOs have started, and let us
build a solution together.
Thank you.
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