project planning and management

PPT… the powerful point

2010-09-14T06:36:00.001-07:00

I always considered PPT as a tool. It is so powerful that we ask people to do power point by which we mean they should make presentation. Tool became the verb!. I have mastered the art of ppt and was adept in using its several features like animations, motion paths, hyperlinks, inserting control/navigational buttons etc and finally found out that a black board (now a days everything is white) and a piece of chalk (read white board marker pen) is the most powerful tool to express yourself. Once, I went to deliver a guest lecture in a small time management school. When my office asked me to do that job I prepared a very elaborate and technically superior ppt so as to impress the students thinking that they being management students will give me accolades. When I went there, I learnt that they do not have the projector and still operating the overhead projector for projecting the transparencies! I almost collapsed out of surprise for their respect for tradition (if old things can be dubbed so) and disappointment for not able to entice the students with my PPTability. Poor course coordinator offered to convert my ppt into transparencies which I declined out of vengeance and frustration. I went on with green board (neither black nor white … something like intermediate technology).

I remembered all this yesterday when I read article by Ravi Subramanian in ET (13 Sept 2010) titled:

Death By PowerPoint: Beware of a presentation-dominated culture.

I cannot agree more with the author and he echoed some of the feelings I often expressed to my colleagues. I my office I have seen people copasting (copy pasting) long passages in a single slide with letters that appear smaller than ants to a person with 100/6 vision sitting 6 ft away. Their duty is to make ppt and not to communicate. Tool is mistaken for the message. Similarly, scores of slides packed for a 15 minutes slot. When I chaired a session in a conference last year, I found it really difficult and painful to ration time to people who came with unending ppt for 10 minutes slot. And each slide packs volumes of information cluttered around. Ideally one should have minimum number of slides with each slide carrying a few lines or still better a few communicative drawings/pictures. If presenting in a conference/seminar, better to highlight results in first 3 - 4 slides and keep the latter slides for explaining the methods, etc. and keep a few reserve slides for answering possible supplementaries. Ultimately, our motto should not be communication or no communication, ppt zindabad. But, ppt or no ppt, I should communicate effectively. This reminds me of my teacher Shri Nagabhushanam who taught Botany in our 9th standard in High School at Ichchhapuram. He explained us the cross section of a leaf without getting up from his chair and we all could visualise how the CS looked without seeing any diagram/picture.

The strength of your project lies not in the ppt, but in its content. I recently heard that the shortest ppt a person presented in a seminar has only a single slide! Wow!

study report on rural industrialisation project

2009-11-08T03:37:00.000-08:00

Here is a study report on evaluation of district rural industrialisation project.

Feel free to give ur feedback.

Satyasai

Technorati Tags: project evaluation

Modified internal rate of return

2009-08-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Hello friends. Meeting you all after a long time. You are all aware of the concept of Internal Rate of Return (IRR). It is return in percentage from investment. Or return from Rs 100 of investment. Though very popular due to ease in interpretation, it has certain limitations due to the restrictive reinvestment assumption. That is, the IRR assumes that the ivestment gives the return when the annual returns are reinvested o fetch returns @ IRR. Hence, Modified IRR concept was suggested in literature. An excel function also is available to compute it. However, the MIRR was hardly applied in Indian siutuations. In the following paper, I applied the method to watershed data. I also demonstrated the method suggested by Cary and Dunn (1997) to adjust MIRR for scale and time span differences across projects we compare.

Application of Modified Internal Rate of Return Method for Watershed Evaluation

K.J.S.Satyasai

Frankly the attempt is direct adoption of known method and I did not make any original contribution. Please read and give your comments.

Thank u all

satyasai

Reverse Murphy Law & Long blog(hol)iday

2009-04-22T04:23:00.000-07:00

I am thankful to the visitors of this blog of mine. I feel guilty that I did not post any new topics thesedays - I enjoyed a long blog holiday- especially when I see the site meter stats which show that people are regulary visiting this blog - at least 5-6 on any day. Perhaps people are visiting to see any updates - I feel awckward for disappointing them. Of course the holiday is only for this and not to my telugu blog, notwithstanding the intermittant gaps there too.
One reason for the gap in this blog is the very fact that i did not come across with any material that I can post here. It is because I am not reading anything on these topics thesdays . .. :))).

Reverse Murphy Law or Satyasai' Law :))

In the previous post I wrote about Murphy's Law. Recently I experienced reverse of it. In nutshell, Murphy's Law says that when things can go wrong they go wrong. We experienced that Things, even when left to go wrong, may still go right.' The incident that prompted me to is like this.

My daughter did a project for her school as part of a team. On the day of the exhibition, she was not to go to school as she was not in the core team which need to explain the things to visitors. Her friend's status is the same. But both of them needed to send the charts prepared by them individually to school on the exhibition day so that the core team can arrange and open for public view. My daughter was to send the chart through my son who is in the same school and whose attendance was compulsory. When the friend called my daughter about the arrangements to send the charts to the core team, my daughter asked her to send it across to my son and never bothered to enquire about the person through who she would send and in which school bus she commutes.

Next day my son developed fever and could not attend the school. Not knowing the arrangements we did not wake up my daughter too. My dauhter got up started panicking as to what to do. I volunteered to take her to school. We went to school clueless as to where to search for who. My son's classmates we met at the venue of the exhibition were clue less too about anyone holding a chart coming in search of my son. We wandered here and there and thought of going to wait at my son's class room in another block. On the way we found a few students of my son's class coming and my daughter went and checked the red coloured chart in a girl's hand and found it to be the one her friend sent. On inquiry we found that the girl carrying the chart received from another boy who was asked by his teacher to carry it and keep in the room where my son's class students were displaying their exhibits.

In the whole process, my daughter did not plan for the contingencies and never took care to have right information . Ironically, we could not contact her friend too on her mobile on which we frenetically tried for over an hour. We have all conditions for ending up in failure to deliver the chart (which was very important and the first introductory chart to be displayed). Had we missed the students who were carrying it to the venue (which could have happened very easily) the chart would have landed in a 'blackhole'.

Murphy's Law operates when we take care of all possibilities of failure and still we may get a setback from unknown corner. Here, in our case, in contrast, we never took care of any possibility of failure and had ideal conditions for a set back.

Here is the Satyasai's Reverse Murphy's Law is at work.

Murphy's Law

2008-04-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

In this post I talk of Murphy’s Law, which I read on www.mindtools.com. This website is an excellent source for many management topics. They are not only professional but also appealing to the layman. In Hindu philosophy, we talk of karma. When something has to go wrong it will go wrong.Everything happens according to our karma. This is simple fatalism. But the hidden spirit behind this karma theory is to inculcate the habit of taking things in proper perspective and without getting frustrated. In practice people tended to misinterpret and practicing in a negative way. Murphy’s Law resembles this karma theory in its intent according to my understanding. The following excerpts are from www.mindtools.com. Read and comment:
“In its simplest form, Murphy's Law states: If anything can go wrong, it will. However, as with many successful business theories, the original law has been extended over time to cover specialist areas, several of which are given below:
• Project Planning: If anything can go wrong, it will. Usually at the most inopportune time.
• Performance Management: If someone can get it wrong, they will.
• Risk Assessment: If several things can go wrong, the one you would LEAST like to happen will occur.
• Practical creativity: If you can think of four ways that something can go wrong, it will go wrong in a fifth way. “
How To Use The Tool
You feel stressed when events that you did not expect to happen occur. And your stress is increased when this happens at the least ideal time. To reduce the stress you feel, you need to take back control!
The following steps will allow you to predict the outcome, and because you are initiating the event, you also know when it will occur. As you go through the steps, your confidence will increase thanks to your application of Murphy's Law.
Step 1:
Butter a piece of toast.
Step 2:
Think of two or more things that could happen if you dropped it. Are any of these more likely to happen if you are wearing suede shoes or are about to set off for a job interview or meet your prospective parents-in-law?
Here's an example of how Murphy's Law can help when things go wrong.
Simon L Tod had recently been promoted to the role of Production Manager at a toy manufacturer. He felt honored to have been chosen, and knew it was because he had always worked hard. But as the peak production season loomed, he was feeling more and more stressed. Things kept happening that he wasn't expecting, and they always seemed to go wrong at 5pm on a Friday, or just as the team were starting work on an urgent order.
Simon mentioned his concerns to his boss, who suggested he apply Murphy's Law to his work to identify what would go wrong and when.
So, on Monday Morning, Simon drew up a list of the key things he had to do that week, when they needed to be completed by, and some of the ways they could go wrong. He also estimated the likelihood of things going wrong in this way. His list included the following items
Task Schedule Risks
Stuff batch of 1,000 teddy bears Delivery to Customer by 8am on Wednesday Stuffing machine will break (10% chance)
Stuffing Machine operative off sick (5%)
Courier company won't deliver on time (5% chance)
Assemble 2,000 toy cars 1 to boss for his son's birthday (on Friday). Remainder to Customer any time on Friday. Wheel supplier sends wheels late (20% chance)
Wheel supplier sends wrong size wheels (10% chance)
On Monday, everything progressed to plan. It was all looking good on Tuesday morning too. But after lunch, when there were still 200 teddy bears to stuff, Simon was called to the workshop by an anxious Quality Control Supervisor who was holding quite the lumpiest teddy bear he'd ever seen.
Simon picked the toy up and squeezed it. Instead of being soft and cuddly, it seemed to be filled with solid items that crunched against each other. Soon, all became clear: the stuffing machine operator had managed to fill the teddy bear stuffing machine hopper with car wheels. The machine had broken these up as they passed through it, but it had still managed to fill the bears. All of the car wheels were now in little fragments; Mostly inside furry bear bellies.
As Simon stood holding the crunchy bear, he saw the courier company van draw up outside the loading bay doors. He now realized that Murphy's Law had predicted that something other than the risks he'd predicted would go wrong, just before the deadline. This allowed him to stay calm and think fast.
He got his packaging supervisor to print out extra labels to put on each bear's box, offering $200 to the first purchaser who sent a bear back to the factory, un-tampered with, correctly identifying what the bear was filled with. The crunchy bear line turned out to be one of the company's bestsellers that year.
Simon ordered more wheels from his supplier, who thought the teddy bear story was so funny that he gave Simon an excellent discount, not only on the repeat order but on future orders of the wheels too.
That left one problem to resolve - a little boy's birthday present. The new batch of wheels couldn't get to the factory till Friday morning - which was too late. So Simon suggested that his boss bring his son down to the factory after school on Friday for a special treat - to see his new car have its wheels fitted. The little boy was thrilled and so didn't mind the fact he'd not has his present at breakfast that morning.
By apply Murphy's Law, and expecting the unexpected, Simon L Tod remained in control throughout a week that would otherwise have proved to be very stressful.

Try this out and be happy.
Que sara sara
(whatever will be will be)

Modelling the project system 1

2008-01-02T09:33:00.000-08:00

This post gives the presentation on the overview models used in the planning process.
see the presentation here

Project formulation and Appraisal

2007-12-18T07:27:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I dealt with project selection process. My discussion of selection of projects presupposes availability of detailed project reports (DPRs) in respect of all the projects in the zone of consideration. I do not want to elaborate the process of preparing detailed project report here unless somebody really asks for it. DPR is a document that communicates all the details about the project under consideration, like project objectives, technical aspects, commercial aspects, financial aspects, economic aspects, possible risks, feasibility analysis, so on. However, I would like to direct you to two publication of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). First one is a field guide for project design and implementation- with reference to project on women in community forestry. This guide will surely help one in designing projects effectively. See the details and the link below.

A field guide for project design and implementation - Women in community forestry
link: http://www.fao.org/docrep/t8820e/t8820e00.htm
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS, ROME, 1989
Reprinted, 1991

The other one is Aquaculture project formulation authored by David Insull Senior, Fishery Planning Officer, FAO Fishery Policy and Planning Division, andColin E. Nash, Programme Leader, UNDP/FAO Aquaculture Development and Coordination Programme. This is available online at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/T0403E/T0403E00.HTM

This publication details the entire project cycle in aquaculture projects. The book is in two parts. First part covers introduction to projects and second part deals with project identification, preparation and appraisal.

Project formulation

(For detailed guidelines see FAO “Guide for Training in the Formulation of Agricultural and Rural Investment Projects”)

The Six Phases of Project Formulation
The three stages of the project cycle are Identification,Preparation and Appraisal. These can be further broken into six phases as below, which may have some overlaps.

Phase I:Preparatory Organization
Phase II: Reconnaissance and Preliminary Project Design
Phase III: Project Design
Phase IV: Analysis of Expected Project Results
Phase V: Project Documentation and Submission
Phase VI: Project Negotiation

PHASE I: Preparation for Project Formulation
Step 1 -Project inception
Step 2 - preparation of a formulation workplan.

The output is the programme of work for project formulation.

PHASE II: Reconnaissance and Preliminary Project Design
Step 3 - analysis/diagnosis of the situation from an overall perspective;
Step 4 - analysis/diagnosis of the situation from the perspective of the main interest groups involved;
Step 5 - assessing the future without the project
Step 6 - outline specification of a possible project.

The output of this phase is the preliminary design of a project, including identification of its main features, such as location, type of participants, main activities, size, timing, organizational structure, and management system. It may be called a project reconnaissance and preliminary design report and also called a project prefeasibility study.

PHASE III: Project Design
Step 7 - detailed technical and socio-economic investigations,
Step 8 - more precise definition of project objectives, targets, and design criteria,
Step 9 - design of individual project components,
Step 10 - design of project organization, structure, and management arrangements, and
Step 11 - project cost and revenues estimation, and first financing proposal.

The output of the phase is a full description and costing of the project, together with a proposed financing plan.

PHASE IV: Analysis of Expected Results

Step 12 - financial analysis,
Step 13 - economic analysis,
Step 14 - social analysis, and
Step 15 - environmental impact analysis.

The output of the phase is the determination of effects and impacts of the project.

PHASE V: Project Documentation and Submission
Step 16 - project documentation and submission.

The output of the phase is the project document.

PHASE VI: Negotiating the Project
Step 17 - project appraisal and negotiation.

The output is a project fully ready for implementation.

Project appraisal:
As we can see above, appraisal is the last step in the project cycle which involves negotiation.

The aims of appraisal are to:

1. evaluate the financial, economic, and social objectives of the project;
2. verify the procedures of the project formulation team;
3. recommend the conditions which will ensure that the project objectives are met; and
4. ensure that the proposed grant/loan/expenditure is in accordance with the policy of the financing institution.

Project appraisal is a process of verification of the situation in the field and a scrutiny of the report. The form of appraisal will vary according to the type of project. For production-oriented projects it will normally include the following aspects:
1. technical, for example, engineering design and environmental matters;
2. financial, for example, requirements for funds, the financial situation of the implementing agency, and of project beneficiaries when appropriate;
3. commercial, for example, procurement and marketing arrangements;
4. social, for example, sociological factors and expected impact of the project on certain groups (such as ethnic minorities and women);
5. institutional, for example, organization and management arrangements, the requirement for arrangements of technical assistance, project monitoring and evaluation;
6. economic, for example, project costs to the national economy, and the size and distribution of benefits.

The format and content of any appraisal report changes with the agency, bank, or corporation concerned, and is their internal reference document. Thus, its reflects their views, and not those of the project formulation team. It is on the basis of this report that the project is formally approved. It is also the reference document for the implementation agreement and subsequent evaluation made.

Here I give a link to WORLD Bank's appraisal report for State Highway project in Andhra Pradesh. You may download the appraisal report of the Bank in pdf format. The report gives all the analysis the Bank made based on the project report submitted to them. The report is an internal document prepared to assess the feasibility before approval.

The report is organised into 5 blocks:

BLOCK 1: Project Description

Covers Project Objectives, Project Components , Benefits and Target Population and Institutional and Implementation Arrangements

BLOCK 2: Project Rationale
Country Assistance Strategy Objectives Supported by the Project, Main Sector Issues and Government Strategy, Sector Issues Addressed by the Project and Strategic Choices, Project Alternatives Considered and Reasons for Rejection, Major Related Projects Financed by the Bank, Lessons Learned and Reflected in the Project Design, Indications of Borrower Commitment and Ownership, Value Added of Bank Support

BLOCK 3: Summary of Project Assessments
Economic Assessment, Financial Assessment, Technical Assessment, Institutional Assessment, Social Assessment, Environmental Assessment, Participatory Approach, Sustainability,
Critical Risks, Possible Controversial Aspects

BLOCK 4: Main Loan Conditions

Effectiveness Conditions, Others

BLOCK 5: Compliance with Bank Policies

ALso contains annexures that tells the top decision making body about the Bank's lending programme ongoing in the country in question and its experience thereof, country profile, etc.

project selection basics

2007-11-27T08:07:00.000-08:00

Today I came across one website http://www.ittoolkit.com/ which contains useful articles on project management, general management topics and IT operations articles and so on.

I discuss the project selection process here in the powerpoint presentation prepared by me based on the material iven on this site.

Besides, project management articles cover the following topics: Interested readers may explore the links.
Project Planning Strategies
Project Scheduling: Backwards and Forward Planning
Project Success: Found in the Eye of the Beholder
Testing Project Deliverables: From Concept to Production
Managing the Project Selection Process
Get Your Project on the Fast Track
Outsourcing Project Work: Choice or Necessity?
The Project Queue: Keeping Customers Informed and Motivated
Smooth Transitions: Planning Project Closure
Concepts and Principles (The Project-Speak Series)
Assumptions and Constraints
Checkpoints
Critical Path
Deliverables
Document Management
Lessons Learned
Milestones
Quality Management
Project Management Standards
Project Office
Project Planning Definitions
Project Steering Committees
Project Sizing
Requests for Proposals
Resource Management Glossary
Stakeholders
Status Reporting
Work Breakdown Structure
Risks, Issues and Change Control
Risk Management Series Part 1: Identifying Risks
Risk Management Series Part 2: Controlling Risks
Risk Management Series Part 3: Practices and Procedures
Project Closure: Graceful Exits from Troubled Projects
Issues Management: From Onset to Resolution
Control Rogue Projects in Four Easy Steps
Controlling Chaos: Managing Change Requests
Finances and Procurement
Calculating the Costs of Quality
Managing the Proposal Process with the RFP
Estimating and Tracking Project Costs
Staffing and Resource Management
Assigning Project Roles and Responsibilities
Evaluating Project Team Performance
Creating Project Job Descriptions
Delegate: It's Easier Than You Think
Is Your Project Team Ready?
Organizing Successful Project Teams
Tailor Made: Matching Project Responsibilities to Project Needs
Project Outsourcing: By Choice or Necessity
Focus on IT Projects
The Role of the End-User in IT Projects
Planning the Technology Migration Project
Project Management in the IT Environment
Projects and IT: Acknowledge the Driving Force
Do You Need a Management Mentor for Your Projects?
Requirements Planning
Dig Deep for Project Requirements
Planning and Managing Project Requirements

Introduction to projects and project cycle

2007-11-22T21:35:00.000-08:00

In this post i cover the following aspects.
1. What is a project?
2. What is a project and how it differs from process?
3. What is project cycle and what are its stages?
4. What is organisational Project Management maturity?

for brief answers to the above see the powerpoint show at the following link.

Introduction to project planning and management

Project Cycle (from World Bank website)

Note: links are not working here and for links you may kindly visit the original page following the link provided at the end of this note. The project cycle diagram is given in the ppt for which link was given above.

Overview

Each year the World Bank lends between US$15-$20 billion for projects in the more than 100 countries it works with. Projects range across the economic and social spectrum in these countries from infrastructure, to education, to health, to government financial management. The projects the Bank finances are conceived and supervised according to a well-documented project cycle. Documents produced as part of the project cycle can be valuable sources of information for interested stakeholders wanting to keep abreast of the work the Bank is financing and for businesses wishing to participate in Bank-financed projects. Below is a step-by-step guide to the project cycle, the documents that are produced as part of the process, and how to access them.

How the Process

Begins: Poverty Reduction and Country Assistance Strategies

The Bank recognizes that many past assistance efforts, including some of its own, failed because the agenda was driven by donors rather than by the governments it was trying to assist. Under its current development policy, the Bank helps governments take the lead in preparing and implementing development strategies in the belief that programs that are owned by the country, with widespread stakeholder support, have a greater chance of success.
In low-income countries, the Bank uses the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach which involves widespread consultation and consensus building on how to boost development. Under this process, a national poverty reduction strategy is prepared by the country, creating a framework for donors to better co-ordinate and align their programs behind national priorities. The government consults a wide cross-section of local groups and combines this with an extensive analysis of poverty in the country's society and its economic situation. The government determines its own priorities from this process and produces targets for reducing poverty over a three to five year period. These are outlined in a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The Bank and other aid agencies then align their assistance efforts with the country's own strategy - a proven way of improving development effectiveness.

The Bank's blueprint for its work with a country is based on a Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) which, in the case of low income countries, is derived from the priorities contained in the country's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. The CAS is produced in co-operation with the government and interested stakeholders. The preparation of the CAS may draw on analytical work conducted by the Bank or other parties on a wide range of economic and social sectors, such as health, education, agriculture, public expenditure and budgeting, fiscal management, or procurement, among others.

The Identification Phase

The Bank's Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) forms the blueprint for its assistance to a country. In low-income countries, the CAS is based on the priorities identified in the country's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (as outlined above). The goals outlined in the CAS guide the priorities of the Bank's lending program and are a useful source of information for interested stakeholders and businesses wishing to identify potential future areas of Bank lending. During the identification phase, Bank teams work with the government to identify projects which can be funded as part of the agreed development objectives. Once a project has been identified, the Bank team creates a Project Concept Note (PCN) which is an internal document of four to five pages that outlines the basic elements of the project, its proposed objective, likely risks, alternative scenarios to conducting the project, and a likely timetable for the project approval process.

Useful public documents

The Project Information Document (PID) is prepared after an internal review of the PCN and is released publicly through the Bank's InfoShop. It is usually four to five pages long and contains the information mentioned above - the objective, a brief description, etc. It also contains the name of the World Bank Task Manager or Team Lead who is supervising the project, a useful contact for companies interested in bidding for work on the project. The PID is an essential resource for tailoring bidding documents to the project concerned.

The Integrated Safeguards Data Sheet (ISDS) is also prepared for the first time after the project's first formal review and made available publicly. It identifies key issues under the World Bank's safeguard policies for environmental and social issues, and provides information about how they will be addressed during project preparation.

The Preparation Phase

This part of the process is driven by the country that the Bank is working with and can take anything from a few months to three years, depending on the complexity of the project being proposed. The Bank plays a supporting role, offering analysis and advice where requested. During this period, the technical, institutional, economic, environmental and financial issues facing the project will be studied and addressed - including whether there are alternative methods for achieving the same objectives. An assessment is required of projects proposed for Bank financing to help ensure that they are environmentally sound and sustainable (Environmental Assessment). The scope of the Environmental Assessment depends on the scope, scale and potential impact of the project.
Useful public documents
An Environmental Assessment Report (EA) analyzes the likely environmental impact of a planned project and steps to mitigate possible harm.
An Indigenous Peoples Development Plan identifies potentially adverse effects on the health, productive resources, economies, and cultures of indigenous peoples.
The Environmental Action Plan - describes the major environmental concerns of a country, identifies the main causes of problems, and formulates policies and concrete actions to deal with the problems.
The Appraisal Phase
The Bank is responsible for this part of the process. Bank staff review the work done during identification and preparation, often spending three to four weeks in the client country. They prepare for bank management either Project Appraisal Documents (investment projects) or Program Documents (for adjustment operations) and the Financial Management team assesses the financial aspects of the project. The PID is updated during this phase. These documents are released to the public after the project is approved (see below).
The Negotiation and Approval Phase
After Bank staff members have appraised the proposed project, the Bank and the country that is seeking to borrow the funds, negotiate on its final shape. Both sides come to an agreement on the terms and conditions of the loan. Then the Project Appraisal Document (PAD) or the Program Document (PGD), along with the Memorandum of the President and legal documents are submitted to the Bank's Board of Executive Directors for approval. The appropriate documents are also submitted for final clearance by the borrowing government which may involve ratification by a council of ministers or a country's legislature. Following approval by both parties, the loan agreement is formally signed by their representatives. Once this has occurred, the loan or credit is declared effective, or ready for disbursement, after the relevant conditions are met, and the agreement is made available to the public.
Useful public documents
The Project Appraisal Document (PAD) presents all the information the Board needs to approve Bank financing of the proposal. Before 1999, this document was called the Staff Appraisal Report. The Program Document (PGD) describes adjustment lending operations, and sets out the Bank's appraisal and assessment of the feasibility and justification for the program.
The Technical Annex supplements a Memorandum and Recommendation of the President for freestanding technical assistance loans, which do not require Project Appraisal Documents.
The Implementation and Supervision Phase
The implementation of the project is the responsibility of the borrowing country, while the Bank is responsible for supervision. Once the loan is approved, the borrowing government, with technical assistance from the Bank, prepares the specifications and evaluates bids for the procurement of goods and services for the project. The Bank reviews this activity to ensure that its procurement guidelines have been followed. If they have, the funds will be disbursed. The Bank's Financial Management Team maintains an oversight of the financial management of the project including periodically requiring audited financial statements.
Useful public document
Report on the Status of Projects in Execution provides a very brief summary of all projects that were active during the previous fiscal year. Previously an internal communication to the Board of Executive Directors, the SOPE Report now is available to the public. Projects that closed during the fiscal year are no longer included in the SOPE, since their Implementation Completion Reports are also publicly disclosed.
The Implementation Completion Report
At the end of the loan disbursement period (anywhere from 1-10 years), a completion report identifying accomplishments, problems, and lessons learned is submitted to the Bank Board of Executive Directors for information purposes.
Useful public document
Implementation Completion Reports review the results and assess an operation on completion of each loan financed by the Bank. Operational staff prepare these self-evaluations for every completed project.
The Evaluation Phase
Following the completion of a project, the Bank's Operations Evaluation Department conducts an audit to measure its outcome against the original objectives. The audit entails a review of the project completion report and preparation of a separate report. Both reports are then submitted to the executive directors and the borrower. They are not released to the public.
Useful public documents
Project Performance Assessment Reports rate project outcomes (taking into account relevance, efficacy, and efficiency), sustainability of results, and the institutional development impact. One in four completed projects (or about 70 a year) is chosen for a Project Performance Assessment Report, which takes Operations and Evaluation Department staff about six weeks to produce and normally includes a visit to the project in the borrowing country.
Impact Evaluation Reports assess the economic worth of projects and the long-term effects on people and the environment. These "second looks" at projects are performed five to eight years after the close of loan disbursements.
Inspection Panel Reports review claims by affected parties that the Bank failed to follow its operational policies and procedures with respect to the design, appraisal and/or implementation of a Bank-financed operation.
Projects may be dropped at any point in the project cycle from preparation to approval. For these projects, which never achieve active status, Project Information Documents, described above, are effectively the final documents.
See also Measuring Results.
Additional Information
• The Monthly Operational Summary discloses the status of projects in the World Bank's lending pipeline from the point they are identified to the time the loan or credit agreement supporting them is signed.
• The Infoshop provides an explanation of the Project Cycle and related documents.
• The Bank's Latin America and Caribbean section has prepared its own description of the Project Cycle, along with relevant links and check lists associated with different stages
• The Business Opportunities site provides advice on how businesses wishing to bid on Bank-financed projects can interact with the Project Cycle.
• A glossary of project documents.

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/GI967K75D0

Pasted from <http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/0,,contentMDK:20120731~menuPK:41390~pagePK:41367~piPK:51533~theSitePK:40941,00.html>

project planning and management-Introduction

2007-11-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

I work for development finance institution for agriculture and rural development. As such I have interest in project planning and management issues.

I plan to blog on different topics on the subject: project planning and managment. Lot of resources are available on the net on this topic. I will try to place the links to them here for easy access. ALready Wikipedia contains material on the subject. I will be posting powerpoints, lecture notes i may prepare as I keep learning. I wish to discuss project planning with special focus on agriculture and rural development as it is my field of work. Hope visitors to my blog benefit from it. I also hope to see your comments, suggestions and any requests for coverage of specific topics.
Thank you all
ss