PROJECT EVALUATION

Is Evaluation An Important Aspect Of a Project?

Is Evaluation An Important Aspect Of a Project?

Introduction

Project management is all about change. There are two paradoxes that should be noted. The first is that an over-bureaucratic model of project management might impede organisational change. Emphasis on rigid control through adherence to detailed plans and budgets and strict timeliness can work against the emerging, iterative nature of many change projects in health and community services. The real solutions to problems in models of care or support systems are often not known at the beginning of a project, which may be why a project approach to the problem has been chosen. Project Evaluation is a step-by-step method of organizing, recording, and collecting information about project outcomes, together with short-term yields (instant outcomes of performance, or deliverable of the project), and instant and longer-term project results (changes in performance, policy or practice resulting from the project). This paper discusses the importance of the Evaluation of any project. Project Evaluation is supportive in finding answers to important questions such as:

Are there techniques that project activities could be refined to get better outcomes?

What advancement has been made?

Do the project results validate the inputs of the project?

Were the desired outcomes accomplished? Why?

Discussion

In this case the project team and the stakeholder need to be flexible in their expectations of exactly what will emerge at the other end, how and when. The project plan is still a vital component, but the need to plan for variation is also a strong one. Project managers must avoid falling in love with their plans. The second paradox is the fact that senior managers may, in effect, be asked to “disempower” themselves and at the same time imposes more discipline on them. Cummings point out that the organisational change literature argues that the support of top management is essential if change is to be realised, yet in practice, there is tension between the project-based authority (held by the project manager) and the functional authority of line managers. As Cummings notes, 'it is natural for managers at every level to struggle against the abandonment of hierarchies' (Cummings, 1999, 18). Some of the organisations we studied experienced problems with ownership or buy-in during the project as a result of the struggle to protect power, and transferability or sustainability of the outcomes after completion of the project also suffered.

Projects may also effectively ask managers to exercise their authority differently, and with more discipline. By locking managers as well as staff into specified goals, strategies, outcomes and budgets, projects can he seen as a temporary and partial stay on the ability of senior managers, to change their minds and manage separate parts of their operations separately and incrementally. In some cases, the leadership level may not have project expertise, and may lack the skills to operate competently in a project environment—for example, not knowing how to respond to the challenges of managing a matrix of projects and line operations.

The solution to this second problem is a long-term one ...