ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN NGO PROJECTS: IN THE CASE OF ETHIOPIA READS

Abstract

Project management is the way of managing change by designing activities that meet specific objectives by involving stakeholders and teamwork to achieve successful implementation. Project management generally accepted knowledge and practices are presented by the nine project management knowledge areas in terms of specific processes. The purpose of this research is to assess the effectiveness of project management practice in NGO projects in the case of Ethiopia Reads. Qualitative research design was employed and data was collected from 20 employees of the organization who are fully engaged in project work through purposive sampling and an in-depth interview questions were used to collect relevant data. The demographic data showed that the participants were between the age of 25 – 41 and they all have work experience of 3 years and above. The respondents are currently working as program managers, project finance officers, project officers, social workers and facilitators. The result showed that the participants have some level of awareness about the project management knowledge areas. Even though they hadn’t been provided with formal project management training, they were practicing the knowledge areas without even recognizing and they have been managing projects applying these knowledge areas. And the result also suggests that quality, time, scope, cost and communication management from the knowledge areas were effective in realizing project success. To conclude, limited skills and knowledge of project management knowledge areas are being practiced in the NGO and therefore, there’s a need to build the capacity of project teams through proper training to acquire and develop the knowledge and skills needed to achieve a better project and project management success in the organization.