THE PRACTICE OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES IN NGOS’S: THE CASE OF SELECTED INTERNATIONAL NGO’S BASED IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

Management of projects requires state of the art project management knowledge and tools. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview on project management practices of tools and techniques use in selected 20 international Non-governmental organization its impact on performance achieved based on project managers’ perception. This study was conducted in 20 selected international NGOs headquartered in Addis Ababa which accomplish development projects.. A mix of quantitative and qualitative study design and purposive sampling procedure were employed to select the NGOs. A total of 100 project managers for quantitative part and 20 heads of MELU for qualitative part involved in the study. Structured questionnaires and in-depth interview check list were employed to collect relevant data. Survey data were subjected to descriptive statistics, principal component analysis for data reduction and correlation analysis using SPSS software. Descriptive results indicated that, the majority of projects 52(52%) are related to Health, Nutrition and Population, followed by Water, sanitation and hygiene 21(21.0%) among other. The project logical framework, Performance Indicators, Budget Monitoring, tools hold the highest means and the lowest standard deviations. This reveals that they are the most frequently used tools. Most importantly, there seems to be an agreement among project managers on the extent to which project logical framework & Performance Indicators are used ((mean = 4.56 & 4.61; SD = .5563 &.5104). On the other hand, tools such as critical path method (mean= 2.23and SD =1.25) earned value management system (mean 2.0 and SD 1.26), MS project software (mean = 2.20 and SD = 1.28) are scarcely used and there is little consensus with regard to its usage if one considers its high-standard deviation. The result also suggests that overall project success is insensitive to the level of Project management effort. However, a significant correlation was observed between the success criteria and all project management tools and techniques except logical framework and performance indicator. To conclude, limited sets of project management knowledge and tools are being applied in NGO’s and hence there is a need to build the capacity of project managers through state of the art project management training and education of their key personnel.