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Managing Micro Projects in an NGO

All Project Managers are aware of the steps in developing and implementing IT projects that can easily follow the PMI methodology; but what if you have to support many independent micro projects along with large full scale IT infrastructure projects? This is a particular problem when projects are political in nature but IT is a major component of a project under 2K Euros 

Working in an Non Government Organization (NGO)with a 2 million Euro IT budget and over 1100 stations means a great deal of project work in maintaining the over all infrastructure, however the organization also develops the local government in this Balkans region, at all levels. This means that many micro projects involve the use of IT systems in support of the local municipal or regional government offices, often a simple as 2or 3 computers with Internet access. These micro-projects help municipal officers in small communities of a thousand or so people keep up-to-date with regional news and to access other government ministries web sites. How can an IT Section setup with a dedicated staff of technical professionals manage to support dozens of simultaneous small scale projects along with the normal100K to 250K Euros IT Infrastructure projects for the organization? 

Each of these micro projects is managed by a Political Officer with little training in Project Management and almost always no IT skills. The organization supports over 300 micro projects annually, with about 25% requiring IT resources which mean developing a consistent management methodology to improve implementation efficiency. The Department of Administration and Support (DAS) in which the IT Section resides has developed the attitude of mentoring in the application of some formality to running micro-projects. This has been resisted by Political Officers who have previously attempted to implement projects with little or no planning. In IT we have adapted the informal Political business practices to Project Management in the following manner: 

All Projects requiring IT support are now reviewed in the planning stage; previously Political Officers simply guessed at their needs and then revised during implementation, never going to IT for support. Today the IT equipment is properly defined for meeting the technical requirements and selected by Subject Matter Experts (SME) in the IT Department (Resource Planning), 

All IT micro-projects are now physically installed and managed by IT, rather than finding someone who might know a little about IT in a municipal office, and then requesting urgent and unplanned support from the IT Department to solve minor problems (Executing, Quality Control), and 

All projects follow the organization’s standardized IT item list using quality brand name computers and networking equipment rather than historically having the Political Officers select a clone PC based on the local vendors recommendations; a process that always forthcoming after the sale. Today the IT section holds a group of standardized assets aside from normal working stock to support field projects (Resource Management). 

Scope planning and control remain weak on these micro-projects, often requiring revision right up to the implementation date, due to the political ramifications and interaction between the organization and local government officials. We have found that in areas of these micro projects than can be controlled (Execution, Resource Planning and Asset Management), we are seeing improvements in scheduling accuracy. While DAS cannot enforce all PMI based Project Management methodologies on other politically driven departments, our insistence on greater formality in planning and reporting has improved the use of public funds in support of rebuilding the local and regional governments our area of operations