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Project management report upon a Not for Profit Organisation (NFPO) supplying an overseas aid programme

Introduction:

In this assignment we will discuss a case of project management in a non-for profit organization.

Project managers in non-for profit organizations usually find it extremely difficult to deliver the required outputs and the reason for that is the lack of money in relation to the big social responsibility that the organization is trying to achieve.

We begin by showing the importance of project management then defining project management and then moving to describe the project management company and then define the scope of the project.

Importance of project management:

Project management has become very important in every organization since many organizations in the UK are trying to be innovative and tending to outsource many of their non-repetitive tasks to specialised consultancies.

Definition of project management:

Project management is the preparation, planning, implementation, and delivering outputs of unusual, non-repetitive tasks.

Projects costs can vary from ten of thousands to millions of pounds, projects could employ few people or hundreds of people.

Traditional approach for project management:

Project managers used to start their projects by defining exactly the goals that they have to achieve, and then subdivide the project into major subprojects and then list all the required tasks that lead to the success of the subprojects and then distribute responsibilities and authorities to the people who should implement the project.

This approach contradicts with the requirements of project management under crisis or stress approach.

Under crisis conditions the project manager does not have enough time to plan every single move, this has made me think that the only way to manage the project under crisis conditions is by decentralising the responsibilities but leaving risk management in the hand of the project manger.

Description of the proposed organization:

Our proposed non-for profit organization is Christian Aid; the proposed project is how Christian Aid managed a project in order to save the lives of orphan children following the Asian tsunami disaster.

Christian Aid is a faith-based organization supported by the churches of the UK.

The aim of Christian aid is to support the people who need most help in order to continue with their lives regardless of the colour, race and religious differences.

Proposed project:

The Asian tsunami disaster has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and thousands of orphan children.

The project aims to save the lives of as many children as possible by providing shelter, food, water and security until international organizations start rebuilding the homes and the economies of these countries.

Scope of the project:

We define the scope of the project according to three factors:

Place: the geographical coverage of the relief project is Aceh, Indonesia.

Time: the duration of the project is no more than 6 months.

Product: the delivery of the project is not only output but it is also results; in this project Christian Aid does not only want to save the lives of the children but also deliver a very important message to the world that all human beings are equal.

Scope involves breaking down the mission to Aceh, which has been hit hard by the Asian Tsunami:

I (the project manager) have decided to subdivide the project in order to monitor the major efforts of the aid relief.

Because this project is urgent and I (project manager) do not have enough time to break down the tasks below any further, my approach is to leave to my experienced staff the flexibility in choosing their own ways of achieving the seven major steps to accomplish this project (fund raising, team building, purchasing, moving, camp setting and wrapping up)

This is a crisis project and I should not list too many detailed tasks to do, this will trap us and delay our efforts, the best way is make use of the experiences of my staff in deciding the appropriate details of achieving their tasks.

I have divided the project to the following sub-projects, I have explained below the complexity of every task:

• Fund Raising: this a project which will be implemented overseas; we need to book tickets and buy huge amounts of food and water and hire carriage, fund raising has to happen quickly in order for the project to continue, there are many channels for fund raising such as 24 hour telephone lines for people who want to donate, on-line donating and events, I have decided to put Kate in charge, she has worked in this field for the last ten years and collected hundred of thousands of pounds during her professional career, this will take two days.
• Team building (Recruiting volunteers) in order to travel as quickly as possible to Aceh: the recruitment process is not easy, this a catastrophe which the history witnessed only few of it; the quality of the volunteers should be very good, they must be professionally trained to live in hard circumstances and be able to understand the impact of this huge disaster on the personality and the behaviour of orphans, I have chose to put Paul in charge in order to recruit the volunteers and give them a brief idea about the tasks that they are expected to do. This will take two days.
• Purchasing (Purchasing Food, Water and drugs): buying food and water to orphans need professionalism; there are many infants who need special kind of food in order to survive. To make matters worse, there are many children who are injured and need a special diet to recover, I have chose to put Mike in charge, he has a long experience in crisis management and he is a doctor; so he knows exactly what to buy and what not to buy. Purchasing will take one day.
• Moving: the removal of the huge amounts of food, water, drugs and volunteers is considered very difficult and costly. There are two stages for this removal:the first stage is the removal of all these things from UK airports to the Indonesian Airports and the next stage is the removal of all these things from the Indonesian airports to Aceh, the removal is very difficult since a large part of the infrastructure is destroyed and there is a wide spread looting in the area, I will put John in charge, he has ten years experience in managing our moves to other countries. This will take three days.
• Camp setting and working: after finishing the last three steps, the team has to set the camp and do on-site treatments for the children and give them food, water and drugs. The treatment has to include shock treatment and psychological problems caused by the loss of parents or relatives; I will put Terri in charge of that. This will take six months.
• Wrapping up and finishing the tasks: this will happen when the international organizations start rebuilding the area and life becomes normal in Aceh, I will leave that to Jack. This will take three days.

Organizational Structure:

E1=0 (assuming we started at time 0).
E2=0+2=2.
E3=0+1=1.
E4=Max (E2, E3)=2
E5=E2+6 months= 2days+6 months.
E6=5 days+6 months. This path is considered the longest path and it is the critical path.

This method is based upon earliest time calculations.

Expected output:

The expected output is to save the lives of the children by giving them the necessities of life and bringing them hope to there Lives and teaching them skills on how they have to get over this tragedy in order to become the hope of the future.

The output in this case is results; Christian Aid is looking for results not only for efforts that may not pay off.

The quality of the expected result is an important issue since Christian Aid does not want any of the children to die in their camp as a result of lack of water or food.

Christian Aid is driven by the gospel and is trying to deliver the message of god and this is a big responsibility.

Project control:

I will choose three ways in order to control the project, these three ways are mix of traditional and new methods of controlling the project, I have chose Milestones and Communications in order to get the support of the senior managers Blair, G (1996):

• Milestones: I will control this project by comparing the planned time with the actual time taken to finish every step of the project.
• Established means of communications: as I have said earlier, I will leave the detail of achieving every step in the hands of my experienced staff, the time may face all sorts of difficulties at any time and the key to solve these problems is by keeping open communications between me and them.
• Risk management: risk be measured and identified, the risk can be used as control tool, we have to minimize the risk shall we want the project to be successful, Goldratt, M(1997).

What is the senior management response to my very decentralised approach?

There was a division in the senior managers opinions about my approach of applying project management on aid relief efforts, while some of them considered it appropriate the others thought that it would cause chaos.

Managers considered chaos is a source of wasting money and loosing our reputation.

Chaos is the key for bad quality deliveries, the managers are used to break down the activities that we need to accomplish in detail.

Managers considered quantifying the deliveries( output) not possible because Christian Aid is a charity and it is prepared everything it could to save the others so we cannot put limits to what we want to achieve.

My reply to the fears of the managers:

I tried to convince the managers that this project is very different from all the projects that we have done before, we do not have to list every single task this will take too much time and make the whole project useless because the chances of finding orphans are getting less every second.

I have suggested depending risk management instead of depending on detailed tasks breakdown, Devaux, Stephen and Larson, Erik W.

Risk management approach tries to minimize the uncertainty of the project and my reply to the senior managers was that by reducing the overall uncertainty of the project we can reduce the spent resources and the necessary time required to implement the project, Lock, Dennis.

I have explained to the senior managers the importance of risk management in controlling the deviations from the planned framework and objectives.
We have to identify risks in every major task and see how risks interact with each other, that is a better way in achieving the desired results than task monitoring and getting stuck in implementing detailed tasks.

This is a project where conflict between the senior management and the project manager may happen because of the lack of understanding to the fact that relief aid entails project management methodology and techniques not only that but also risk management is the most important department in non-for profit organizations,Jack R. Meredith Samuel J. Mantel

I have explained to the managers as well that Christian Aid could not achieve everything it wants there are limits to the resources it uses and we have to identify what we want to achieve exactly in order to achieve our goals successfully.

Principal stakeholders:

There are several stakeholders playing here in this crisis:

• The Asian Tsunami orphans: we have a moral responsibility to help these people recover from their crisis and resume their lives.
• Values of Christian Aid: Christian Aid reputation will be at stake, we have to do our best in order to show that Christian Aid does not only hold noble values but also able to translate its values into practice.
• Donors: the donors are very important stakeholder; we must show the public that we are able to spend their money in the right place and in the right time.
• Our team (the volunteers): our team members are very essential stakeholders, we have to provide them with all means of success and we have to take care of their Health and Safety.
• The Indonesian government and the World: our effort is part of the larger effort made by the Indonesian government and the world's organizations.

Estimated Budget:

In this section I have proposed to the senior directors the estimated cost of the project:

• Fund raising: the costs of fund raising will depend on the channels through which the charity will raise funds; the relief efforts should be urgent otherwise we will lose more lives, if our efforts took too long to reach the orphans, there would be no point in the relief efforts; we will depend on on-line donation and telephone donation as a quick way to cover our expenses; the cost of setting up a premium website to help standing the large number of donors will be £5000.
• Team building: most of the team members are volunteers who are welling to give their time and efforts in order to save lives; we may need to hire some professional doctors if the number and the professionalism of the volunteers are not enough; we will leave an estimated budget for that of about £25000.
• Purchasing food, water and drugs: the substantial cost will be in buying the needs of the rescue efforts, this is a very costly phrase of the rescue effort, and I will put a budget of £50000.
• Moving: the cost ofmoving all the food, water, drugs and people to Indonesia is very costly, this will cost about £ 55000.
• Setting up the camp: setting up the camp in a way to guarantee the safety and the security of all the children and the staff will cost about £30000.

The total budget for the project will be: £165000.

Risk Register:

There are many risk factors in this project; this is a very critical project for the lives of many children and the event and the scene of the project is happening in exceptional circumstances.

Risk management is very modern topic; it has been introduced in project management very recently.

I (project manager) have to be prepared for every possibility instead of planning to every task; I have to have a contingency plan, risk management became an essential part of project management, Gray, CliffordF. and Larson, Erik.

I have chose to develop a risk management approach that depends expecting the risks that we may face.

Jack, Terri, John, Mike, Paul and Kate should stay connected to me in order to give me a daily updates about their missions.

Depending on the risks and the difficulties that we face I will change the plan.

Risk factors are:

• Lack of donations: we are still in the early hours after the disaster, it seems to everybody that the scale of the disaster is catastrophic but we have no initial indications of how to the public will respond to the disaster, this type of disaster has happened only few times in the history and we do not have statistics of how the public will respond.

The consequences of lack of donations:

A-If the money is not enough we may not be able to recruit the highly skilled staff that we need

B- we have to choose non-urgent carriers in order to reduce the costs of express carriers.

C- The quantity of food, water and drugs will be less and the project will not be a quality project.

How to manage this risk:

I should ask Christian Aid to request more funds from the churches of England.

The likelihood of the first risk factor is only minor; the British people donate millions of pounds every year to charities and non-for profit organizations.

• Delay in delivering food, water and drugs:

As we have already said, the scale of destruction is horrendous, there are initial reports saying that the earthquake has destroyed large parts of the major airports.

Many other initial reports are talking about the destroyed infrastructure such as roads.

How to manage this risk:

If this is true, we will try to parachute the aid from the sky to the location of the camp.

This step will not be a real handicap in front of our plans to set up the camp.

The likelihood of this risk is high.

• Security fears while the team in the camp:

In such disasters people do not have food and every body would be trying to survive.

Many adults may try to take the food, water and drugs; this will leave the children in danger.

How to manage this risk:

I will let some volunteers to work as security guards to the camp.

Even if this happen, I will ask Christian Aid to give us more of what we need, the donations must have kicked off.

The likelihood of this happening is very high.

Conclusion:

It is very important to understand that project management is a general approach in implementing aid relief, aerospace projects, personal picnic and all other projects.

It is very essential as well to understand the importance of risk estimation and measurement in the topic to aid relief.

Risk management should be essential in managing aid relief efforts.

The literature that is written on this topic does not cover project management in non-for profit organizations, that is way

References:

• Blair, G (1996): Starting to Manage: The Essential Skills. Publisher:Chartwell-Bratt (UK).
• Goldratt, E(1997): Critical Chain,
• Lock, Dennis (2004): Project management: seventh edition.
• Jack R. Meredith Samuel J. Mantel: Project Management: a managerial approach.
• Devaux, Stephen and Larson, Erik W: Project Management: The Managerial Process.

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