Project Cycle Management

Syllabus of the Subject: Project Cycle Management of Development Projects.

1. International Development Project Cycle

2. In-depth review of the Project Cycle Management (PCM) and the Logical
Framework Approach and its Phases and Documents
3. Project Identification and its Tools
4. Project Formulation or Appraisal and its Tools
5. Project Description or “Fiches” and Drafting Terms of Reference or
Statements of Work
6. Project Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation
7. Fundamentals of Financial and Economic Analysis (ECO-FIN) and other
Methodologies of Financial Appraisal
8. Conclusions and Review.

Objectives.

1. Knowing all terminology relating to projects of the different Multilateral

Funding institutions
2. Carrying out a general analysis of EC Management Cycle and identifying
projects tools
3. Controlling all the issues of Logical Framework: indicators, means of
verification, hypotheses, and risk analysis
4. Carrying out an Economic and Financial Analysis (Eco-Fin)

In this subject; we will study the Logical Framework Approach (LFA) and the
Project Cycle Management of various institutions.
We will analyse everything relating to these public Project Management
instruments, focusing on the differences and similarities of the different
Multilateral Funding institutions, as well as in the economic financial analysis
(Eco-Fin) a complement to these previously described tools.

The EC takes part in development cooperation (external actions) using three

mechanisms: Direct support to projects, sector budget support, and
Macroeconomics support. Project support is carried with the methodology of
Project Cycle Management. The graph below shows the stages and documents of
this approach:
The Logical Framework Approach (LFA) is a series of techniques used for
identifying the key problems and objectives that the project wants to address and
project then proceeds to a detailed formulation of the project. It is also used for
consulting and involving stakeholders as much as possible.
The Logical Framework Approach is an analytical process, as well as a series of
tools to support planning and project management and monitoring. It allows
information to be analysed and organised according to its importance and then the
project to be designed. Moreover, it allows to identify options or alternatives and
support decision-making for allocating resources and activities.

The Logical Framework Matrix is the matrix-shape result and summary of these
analyses of the project, and consists of four columns and four rows, which
summarise the key elements of a project before, during and after executing (it is
possible to change or keep still the matrix throughout the project).

- The first column of the Logical Framework Matrix describes that aspect of the
level of the project; it is also known as Intervention Logic.
- The second and third columns are the indicators and the principal means of
verification for monitoring and assessing and belong to the so-called Horizontal
Logic.
- The fourth column: Hypotheses or Assumptions are the external factors, which
have the power to influence the success of the project, but are outside the direct
control of the project management. They belong to the so-called Vertical Logic.

For the project identification we will consider the following stages:

- Stakeholders analysis.
- Problems analysis.
- Objectives analysis.
- Strategies/alternatives analysis.
- Description of the project and schedule, budget, risks.
Each of the steps inside of the Logical Framework Approach is important because
they help us to define an aspect of the project and its future implementation.

Last but not least; we review the key concepts related to the Economic and
Financial Analysis (Eco-Fin) of development projects, according to the European
Commission external programme. It focuses on the point of view of the institution
or a Group of institutions (beneficiary, Target Group). This is done using the Cost-
Benefit Analysis or Cost-Effectiveness Analysis, depending on whether the
benefits have an economic impact or not.

For carrying out the Economic and Financial Analysis (Eco-Fin); we need to
imagine the parameters we want to analyse to a certain degree, and model the
underlying economics of the sector and products/services. Furthermore, we need
To understand the desired level of analysis and the “economic” certainty that key
stakeholders or beneficiaries “will accept” (depending on their function, education
and their role as Executive agency, EC Delegation or Washington or Brussels HQ
offices).

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Evaluation in the Project/Programme Cycle

EVALUATION AT ALL STAGES OF THE EVALUATION CYCLE

Evaluation is often seen as an "end of project cycle" exercise. Evaluation,

however, plays a distinct role at all stages of the project cycle.

Source: UNODC Evaluation Handbook, p. 11

Source: UNODC Evaluation Handbook, p. 45

STRATEGY SETTING AND PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT

Programmes and projects need to be designed with evaluation in mind as

evaluation is an essential part of their life cycle.
When formulating a new project/programme or a revision, Project/Programme
Managers should:
1) Review prior evaluation results, recommendations and lessons learned.
Evaluation enables continuous improvement and learning to be used for new
strategies, programmes and projects; 2) Review evaluation plans to ensure
coordination and coherence of evaluation activities; 3) Carefully plan the timing of
the evaluations; and, 4) Ensure sufficient funding (calculated with the Evaluation
Budget Matrix). The planning stage further includes consultation with
stakeholders.
Evaluation Handbook (Overall context of evaluation and Guide for
project/programme managers and evaluators)
PROJECT APPROVAL PROCESS

All programme/project documents and revisions thereof are required to include a

tentative evaluation plan. IES reviews and clears such in the Direct Approval
process and for the approval process of the UNODC Programme Review
Committee (PRC). To avoid last minute changes, pre-consultation with IES is
recommended.
There is a Template for the evaluation paragraph in the Project Document
(English), (Spanish) and the Project Revision (English), (Spanish). Required
details include: 1) Type of evaluation; 2) Quarter and year to initiate the
evaluation; 3) Budget (calculated with the Evaluation Budget Matrix) 4) Use of
evaluation results; 6) Prior evaluations; and, 7) whether a Cluster evaluation is
planned. See Cluster Evaluation Guidelines
Evaluation Handbook (Overall context of evaluation and Guide for
project/programme managers and evaluators).

RESOURCE MOBILIZATION

Evaluation reports, through evidence based findings and thorough analysis, allow
UNODC to show donors and Member States the work that has been achieved, the
positive outcomes of UNODC's engagement as well as the gaps that remain to be
filled.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Evaluations provide important findings and recommendations which point out the
positive and the negative aspects of the work being conducted. By undertaking an
evaluation and by following its recommendations, an Organization can ensure
success and prevent easily avoidable mistakes from happening. This allows
UNODC to reach its goals and achieve planned outcomes as set in its strategies.

Project Cycle of International Development Projects (Baum, 1978)

Source publication

Governance of tomorrow's international development projects (IDPs): flexible

or rigid?
Although International Development Projects (IDPs) remain important instruments
for activating and achieving sectoral and national development in the developing
world, they often fall short of making their desired impact because they are
implemented under challenging conditions with rigid procedures. This paper
illustrates that flexibility is criti...
Cite

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Context in source publication

Context 1

... life cycle, stages linking the start to the end, of IDPs consists of a number of
progressive phases that lead, from the identification of needs and objectives
through the planning and imple- mentation of activities in order to address these
needs and objectives, to the assessment of the outcomes (Biggs & Smith, 2003).
Baum (1978) in- troduced a specific six progressive-phase life cycle of IDPs
(Figure 1). The majority of development agencies such as European Commission
(EC), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Australian Agency
for International Development (AusAID) have a project cycle of five or six phases,
very similar to Baum's but with differences in content and in the names of the
phases (Golini & Landoni, 2013). ...

View in full-text

Citations
... These projects also suffered from significant scope reductions and lengthy
periods of delay between approval and start of implementation as shown in Figure
1, alongside their schedule overrun. Following the research approach of Kharbanda
and Pinto [35], Olsson [37] as well as Boakye and Liu [38], the PCRs of the
sampled projects, which are available for public access were extensively analysed
to extract the factors responsible for their failure. A simple manual content analysis
without the use of any computer software was undertaken. ...
... IDPs, by virtue of their experimental nature, as reported by Rondinelli [25], are
unique interventions in which even seemingly routine replications often meet
unanticipated difficulties when transferred from one cultural setting to another. A
natural implication of this uniqueness is the impossibility to know all activities
required for a project to succeed at the initial planning stage [46], a characteristic
which from the viewpoint of Boakye and Liu [38], underpins the application of
good project management principles in IDPs. Moreover, IDPs tend to have several
closely linked phases (e.g. ...
With the Projectisation of the World, The Time is Right to Unravel Why
International Development Project (IDP) Failure is Prevalent
Article
 Full-text available

 Mar 2016

 Lawrence G. Boakye

 Li Liu

International Development Projects (IDPs) are plagued with failure although they
have become and will remain an important instrument of activating and achieving
development in developing countries. They are failing at an astonishing rate,
despite genuine management efforts. This paper looks into IDP failure using three
real-world classic examples of failed IDPs and confirms a marked consistency in
factors that cause failure of both IDPs and conventional projects. It identifies and
describes some common factors for IDP failure with a view to understanding them
so as to reduce the rate of their failure. The paper introduces new stimulating
research ideas and provides a platform for the incremental accumulation of future
research on IDPs. Findings will benefit project professionals, especially IDP
professionals, development-oriented organisations and the International
Development Body of Knowledge.
View

... IDP host a vaster front-end planning and decision-making process in comparison
with conventional projects planning (Ika & Saint-Macary, 2012, p.433).
Identification of development needs and project design if performed almost
exclusively by the donor organization and government (Boakye & Liu, 2015,
p.57). The Logical Framework Approach is the most widely used tool in IDP
(Boakye & Liu, 2015, p.57; Golini et al., 2015, p.651). ...
 ... Identification of development needs and project design if performed almost
exclusively by the donor organization and government (Boakye & Liu, 2015,
p.57). The Logical Framework Approach is the most widely used tool in IDP
(Boakye & Liu, 2015, p.57; Golini et al., 2015, p.651). Implementation is normally
done by recipient government or an " implementing partner " , who has already
subscribed a cooperation agreement with the donor institutions or countries (Ahsan
& Gunawan, 2010, p.68). ...
... Then, they start drafting how the solution would be built. Step 2 represents an
urgent swtich from a strictly LogFrame design by integrating holistic perspectives
of the problem at hand (Boakye & Liu, 2015, p.57; Golini et al., 2015, p.651).
Also, the participation of the project manager in the design process smooths the
way to build up flexibility by promoting knowlegde of goals and assumptions
(Nogueira & Raz, 2006, p.9; Pich et al., 2002, p.1006). ...
The SUITED framework for International Development Project
Management: Enhancing flexibility in IDP
Thesis
Full-text available

 Jan 2016

 Vanessa Castillo
 Freddy Salgado

International Development Projects (IDP) are designed to deliver sustained

solutions to human life quality threatens. They aim to improve living conditions in
emerging countries through initiatives that should provide long-term sustained
results. However, the extreme characteristics of IDP contexts challenge traditional
project management methodologies. The dynamic nature of stakeholders’
relationships and influence adds additional pressures to the management teams.
Higher levels of uncertainty in IDP are faced with non-flexible strategies that
compromise the long-term desired results. Not enough participation of relevant
stakeholders and beneficiaries limits the impact of development initiatives. The
authors could identify that IDP management is overall an under-investigated field.
Specifically, contemporary challenges arisen from unbalanced robust/flexible
strategies and low stakeholders participation have undermined the impact success
of those projects. Moreover, there is no academic study that constructs on how
flexibility could be enhanced in IDP, while maintaining control. Methodologies
such as design thinking and agile have elucidated new paths of action for better
impact and customer satisfaction in other industries, by enabling flexibility and
change management. Despite their huge proven success, these methodologies are
still a phenomenon limited to IT and design industries. Therefore, in IDP field
there is no framework linking contingency and participatory development theories
with flexible methods similar to design thinking and agile methodologies. In order
to bridge this gap the authors will embark in a qualitative study to explore
literature and gain insights from actors within the IDP field about the problem at
hand. A multiple embedded case study will be conducted with ID academics and
practitioners at supervisory and implementation levels from across the world. A
possible solution will be designed for IDP management from a different angle to
that of traditional management, in order to build up flexibility without
compromising project structure. The proposed framework will tackle flexibility
and participation issues by integrating design thinking and agile methodologies
into IDP. The theoretical findings suggest that enabling participatory development
strategies in the design phase, and expanding the available project knowledge
would enhance IDP flexibility. Likewise, IDP flexibility during the implementation
phase is impacted by the quality and relevance of information and methodological
 tools available, stakeholders’ involvement, as well as the handover process.
Therefore, since no previous studies interconnecting those theories to enhanced
flexibility could be found in IDP, an expansion of available theoretical knowledge
on contingency and participatory development theory in IDP is produced. The
authors concluded that design thinking and agile principles may conceptually
prove useful to effectively deal with the problems identified, thus project design is
more adequate, and collaboration among stakeholders proves effective to deal with
uncertainty and complexity. These constructs are explained in the propositions
made for the SUITE framework to IDP, which aims to practically contribute to the
management field of IDP.
View

... The lack of statistically significant relationships between IDP failure and weak
project structure as well as weak implementation capability is somewhat
unexpected. Studies have shown, for example, that the lack of project flexibility,
scarcity of adequate resources and personnel constraints can cause IDPs to fail
(see, for example, [134]; [154]; [111]). Probably, the small sample size of the study
limits its statistical power to identify these two (2) underlying reasons of IDP
failure as significant to their failure. ...
The Underlying Reasons Why International Development Projects (IDPs)
Fail: The Case of African Development Bank (AfDB)-Funded Projects
Thesis
Full-text available

 Jun 2015

 Lawrence G. Boakye
As pointed out by the United Nations (UN), the kernel of the project concept lies in
its application to other than routine activities of an organisation or government
agency, for purposes of special emphasis and action. Projects are thus appropriate
ways to especially organise highly innovative, experimental/risky endeavours or
those with high priority in development policy. As such, International
Development Projects (IDPs), usually implemented to stimulate economic growth
and development in developing countries, have become a major way through
which development assistance is channelled into the developing world. However
projects are especially difficult to plan and manage even in advanced industrial
nations, but particularly so in less developed countries. The unique characteristic of
projects, coupled with the nature of IDPs and the resource-constraint environment
within which they are implemented, has produced disappointing results for the
stakeholder-beneficiary dyad. The record of IDPs is therefore not so good; they
have been reported to have ironically turned failure into a rule rather than an
exception. Through empirical analysis, the study herein presented utilises
completion reports of 53 African Development Bank (AfDB)-funded projects to
investigate the reasons underlying the failure of IDPs. It identifies poor project
Quality-at-Entry (QAE), weak project structure, poor control mechanisms, weak
implementation capability and cognitive bias as the underlying reasons for their
failure. It further identifies poor project QAE, poor control mechanisms and
cognitive bias as the most prominent predictors of their failure. Findings of the
study are especially beneficial to professionals in International Development
Project Management (IDPM), development-oriented organisations as well as to the
body of knowledge on international development. The findings also provide a
useful platform for the incremental accumulation of further research on IDPs.
View
 Doing Good by Doing Bad: Reasons Underlying the Failure of International
Development Projects (IDPs)
Conference Paper
Full-text available

 Jun 2017

 Lawrence G. Boakye
 Li Liu

Prior studies have identified some factors that cause the failure of International
Development Projects (IDPs). However, little to no studies have sought to uncover
the reasons that underlie the continuous failure of these projects. By exploring 53
defunct AfDB- funded projects in Ghana and Mali to come out with reasons that
facilitated their failure, we provide and extend much needed contextual knowledge
on IDP failure by uncovering five (5) underlying reasons responsible for the failure
of IDPs, which is a catalyst for further research. Armed with the identification and
an understanding of these reasons, we put International Development (ID)
institutions and development practitioners in a better position to avoid the
development and planning of IDPs that would be doomed to failure from outset.
View

Management Skills in the Public Sector: Do International Partners and the

Public Sector see eye to eye?
Conference Paper

 Apr 2019

 Bishoy Zaki
The adoption of the “New Public Management” (NPM) has enforced the mandate
for efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector (Nygaard & Bramming, 2008)
while operating under reduced resources (Darling & Cunningham, 2016). New
tools in the public sector continuously require personnel to engage in new roles
such as establishing relationships, inclusion of multi-sectorial stakeholders and
networks management (Mikulskienė, 2015). The public sector even started moving
into projectification to meet the public’s demands for accountability and
effectiveness (Crawford & Helm, 2009). This highlighted new methods and skills
for public organizations (Kudo, 2015), and posed a challenge as the public sector
suffers a shortage of “good project managers” (Wirrik, 2009). Hence, governments
strive to develop their managerial skills (Coxhead, et al., 2010) to improve
performance (Kudo, 2015). Human factors (particularly skills), can constitute
critical success factors (CSF) for projects as explained by (Morris & Hough, 1987;
Pinto & Slevin, 1987) as well as (Belassi & Tukel, 1996) who explicitly mentioned
the project manager, and (Wirrik, 2009) who considers the project manager’s skills
as a CSF for public sector projects. Wirrik and (Kassel, 2010) categorized public
sector managers’ skills largely into two groups; “Technical” and “Personal” skills.
Others classified those skills under competency categories such as cognitive or
directional competencies (Schroder, 1989), while Porvaznik’s holistic
competencies model (2013) classified managerial competencies into three
categories including knowledge ability, application skills and social maturity as
mentioned by (Skorková, Competency models in public sector, 2016). With the
growing size of international development projects delivered through international
agencies – government collaboration (overseen by public sector managers), the
distinct nature of public sector operation (Noordegraf, 2000); several
implementation challenges have been observed. This paper addresses the topic by
laying the groundwork for well-informed innovation in public sector management
education. This is through exploring and identifying the key public sector project
management skills that are critical for those working on international development
projects. This is from the dual perspectives of international development agencies
working with public sector managers as well as from the public sector manager’s
perspective – that is a novel combination of perspectives not commonly addressed
in literature considering values and functions of specific organizations (Wirrik,
2009). This is a preliminary, early stage research paper that focuses on joint
international development - public sector projects being conducted in developing
countries, thus bringing forward an up to date perspective within a developing
country context with consolidated practical real-life observations implementing
such projects. Findings in this study have initially indicated that the most critical
soft skills for public sector project managers working on international development
projects are Communication and diplomatic Skills, Agility responsiveness and
flexibility and Team Building while the most critical hard skills are Scope
Management, Schedule Management and Communications management.
Additionally, the study identified the top three critically lacking soft skills to be
Agility, responsiveness and flexibility, Communication and diplomatic Skills and
Leadership while the critically lacking hard skills to be Schedule Management,
Quality Management and Monitoring and Evaluation Skills.
View

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