Project Development and Management Lecture Notes

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key concepts of project development and management, including life cycle stages, HRD theories, and socioeconomic development approaches.

Project

A characteristic that integrates the concept of temporary and unique, often serving as a process to determine a realistic response to a problem or an intervention to meet a need.

Project Management Cycle

A cycle that includes budgeting, designing, developing, implementing, and ending a project.

Executing processes

The process of coordinating people and other resources to carry out the project plan.

Goals

The ultimate aim of the project.

Project procurement management

The management of buying goods and services during the project.

Activities

Groups of actions and resources that must be completed to produce each project output, such as feeding programs or basketball leagues.

Project integration management

Processes required to ensure that the various elements of the project are properly coordinated.

Project strategies

The means by which agreements of project stakeholders are reached and integrated at the end of the planning process.

Hierarchy of Objectives

The first column of the Log Frame matrix containing project objectives and the major activities needed to realize them.

Project Monitoring and Evaluation Tool

A basis used to determine if a project is being implemented smoothly in accordance with the plan in the long run.

Project quality management

A knowledge area in project management consisting of quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control.

Palliative and liberative

The two approaches used in development projects.

Inputs

The resources needed by a project to implement its activities.

Community participation

The involvement of people in projects to solve their own problems.

Planning

Expressing opinions about desirable improvements, prioritizing goals, and negotiating with an agency.

Assumptions

The fourth column of the Log Frame matrix containing factors that cannot be controlled or that the project chose not to control which affect the project.

Closing

The process of formalizing acceptance of the project or phase and bringing it to an orderly end.

Mobilizing

The act of raising awareness in a community about needs and establishing or supporting organizational structures within that community.

Project human resource management

A knowledge area consisting of organizational planning, staff acquisition, and team development.

Sustainability

The potential for the continuation of project benefits even after the termination of the project.

Program

A collection of projects with a larger development purpose than an individual project.

Objectively Verifiable Indicators

The second column of the Log Frame Matrix including indicators showing that objectives have been achieved.

Project management processes

A generalized view of how various project management processes commonly interact.

Controlling processes

Monitoring and measuring progress regularly to identify variances from the plan so corrective action can be taken.

Project manager

The head or team leader of the project management team.

Impact

Sustainable changes in human conditions of target groups, usually measured after the project life.

Implementation

The part of the project management cycle where interventions, services, and activities are carried out.

Institutional theory

A Human Resource Development theory emphasizing organizational structures that support creativity or bureaucratic structures, procedures, and enforcement of employment contracts.

Conscientization

A facilitative process that allows participants to work collectively to investigate the world around them.

Comparative advantage theory

A theory introduced by David Richardo regarding specialized division of labor among nations and firms.

Oppression

A social dynamic where certain ways of identified being are privileged while others are disadvantaged or marginalized.

General systems theory

A theory explaining that no organization can survive without interacting with its environment.

Sustainable development

Development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Ownership

The level of participation where beneficiaries are both willing and able to sustain and further develop project initiatives.

Increasing involvement

The level of participation where beneficiaries develop more trust in the project and begin taking on some responsibilities.

Project appraisal

The stage in the project cycle involving further analysis of a proposed project.

Strategy

A way to proceed from known to unknown, or from simple to sophisticated.

Project identification

A stage in the project cycle where the idea is formed through discussion with specialists and local leaders as a need-based issue.

Partnership approach

An approach emphasizing synergy or networking of all development actors gathering for a sole vision.

Participatory development

Development that implies negotiation rather than the dominance of an externally set project agenda.

Flexible approach

An approach requiring continuous monitoring and evaluation where planned targets should be progressive.

Marxism

A method of social analysis focusing on class relations and societal conflict using a materialist interpretation of history.

Capitalism

An economic system where trade, industries, and the means of production are largely owned and operated privately for profit.