Good Governance and Project Management

Project management is a generic term. ‘Project’ may concern a wide range and variety of interventions, including, e.g., policy formulation and appraisal, sector and / or regional development planning, single investment projects with or without alternative configurations. Similarly, ‘management’ may concern the management of all or a number of project preparatory stages, or implementation, technical management, financial management, political management. This paper will address project management processes. Its point of departure is that the ‘project’ to the project manager is the management process, not the project itself. We will, furthermore, look at project management from four key angles conducive to sound financial and economic management as is transpiring from two decades of intensive international debate on ‘Good Governance’. We will, in the third place, explore the challenges to ‘Good Project Management’ in different types of project. In the course of the discussion we will review some salient project management instruments. However ‘right’ though may be the procedures and methods of project management, there is no substitute for the ‘right’ project manager, in terms of qualifications, personality and downright project management capability and experience.