Tough love

Development organisations face a stark choice, says John Cropper, programme director at Oxfam: continue with poorly-run projects and risk a loss of resources and reputation, or learn what other sectors have already learned that project management is a vital skill for effective delivery.

Projects are the lifeblood of international non-governmental organisations (iNGOs). In many organisations, around 75 per cent 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 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 isnt either a project or programme or which supports projects and programmes.

In the case of emergency response its 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, 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.

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 doesnt make it on to the risk register of most private and public sector projects. Project managers like to talk about time and cost. Well, at the beginning of an emergency response, you probably wont have a complete picture of the money or staff available for a project. You probably wont know the timescale and in the case of an emergency, there is enormous pressure to act immediately as delays can cost lives.

So what does it matter if project managers are not called project managers, if they lack the necessary qualifications or if there is no Project Management Office or equivalent? What matters is that the projects are well run.

Overspend

The problem is, not all projects are run well. I had a look at data from one organisation and found that over a one-year period:

• 65 programmes were over allocated by more than 10 per cent meaning that the sum of the project budgets was bigger than the programme budget.
• 70 programmes were overspent by more than 10 per cent.
• 235 projects were overspent by more than 10 per cent.
• The amount of project overspend was over 15 million.
• At the end of the year, 89 projects had overdue milestones. And this is by no means an isolated incident. After speaking about project management in iNGOs with people from different organisations a familiar picture emerges.
• 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.

In the private sector and increasingly the public sector, if youre not qualified, you wont get short-listed for a project management job. My own experience is when I tell iNGO staff that I am PRINCE2 qualified they dont know what I am talking about. In fact the general assumption is that anyone can do it. You just pick it up. Osmosis is the main development technique. There would be outrage if you took a project manager and said from now on, you are going to be a public health advisor. We wont train you, we havent got a set of standards; there isnt an agreed methodology. We have a handbook that covers everything have a look at that. Im sure youll 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.

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, in the way that we promised and within the agreed costs. 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 couldnt possibly finish on time, they said it didnt matter as the donor would give them a no cost extension. This term is symptomatic of much that to my mind is wrong about how we manage projects.

Fictitious

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 always 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 subsidise our lack of planning and management.

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 Worlds 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 across the organisations operations about what we are going to do, why we are doing it and how we are going to do it, will allow us to work from a position of strength.

It is quite easy to create the impression that the situation is terrible. I believe though, that in the majority of cases, senior staff dont really know what the situation is or indeed how bad it is. There isnt space to talk about why this situation has developed 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 criticism.

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.

In addition, perhaps more than most sectors, we manage other peoples money taxpayers money via government agencies or ministries as well as individual peoples donations. When we think of donations, it is easy to think of wealthy people who give much. Lets also remember quite poor people who give small amounts which represents a much greater share of their income. We owe it to them to use their resources wisely and to best possible effect.

Standards

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 wont help much. Spending lots of money on new IT systems may give an illusion of activity but wont make much difference.

Instead 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. 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 one 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. If this makes projects more effective or efficient work out by how much.

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 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 for the change process and the process needs to be resourced. Someone needs to be held to account if this fails.

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.

Above all, we need to move away from reliance on osmosis and serendipity and a culture of itll 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 and, if there are obstacles, they need to be removed. Organisations that have yet to start need to wake up. Put simply, I believe that the stakes are too high to fail.

• John Cropper runs one of Oxfam GBs global programmes on governance and womens rights with projects in 19 countries. He is also a trustee of Anti Slavery International.
• This article is taken from a keynote speech, Project Management in International NGOs: a crossroads, given by John at the Project Management for International Development Summit in London on September 16 2009