Project Cycle Management

There are a number of principles which are crucial to good practice in project management. Perhaps the most important is the use of a structured methodology which everyone involved can understand and use.

Project Cycle Management is a structured methodology: a single method containing a number of linked techniques that create a robust and effective way of managing complex projects of all kinds. Understanding the management approach is as important as leaning the techniques.

Applying the Logical Framework to every stage
The Logical Framework techniques should be applied during each stage of PCM in the correct order and way. Consistent linkages must be maintained and projects kept firmly focused on solving the identified problem.

Participation
Involving Stakeholders in participatory analysis and decision-making around community and project development issues is an important operational method.

Team work
In large or small groups, it is important that people come together for specific tasks to do something that needs doing.

Facilitation
The process of PCM facilitates people to make decisions and act upon them; building skills and confidence to be more in control of their own affairs.

Sustainability as the way to measure and appraise success
PCM puts the focus on how to create sustainable benefits rather than how to provide and deliver a service.

Standardised documentation
This builds greater transparency into the process of project preparation, implementation and evaluation, and leads to greater inclusiveness.

Quality Assurance
PCM uses an integral quality assurance system: measurement indicators based on combining local values and funding criteria are used by projects to fit in with and support a community's strategy and plans. These are:

• Projects are relevant to the agreed strategy and to the real needs of beneficiaries.
• Projects are feasible, in that objectives can be realistically achieved within the constraints of the operating environment and the capabilities of the implementing agencies.
• Projects are sustainable, so that the services developed and delivered by the project continue to be delivered in the longer term, leading to a continued flow of benefits.