NGO Project Management Initiative

Staff Meeting

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 – 4:00 PM (EDT)

Participants

Caren Conner
Mike Culligan
Kay Fleischer
Leslie Sherriff

SUMMARY

The meeting was used to discuss curriculum contextualization. Mike reported that we now have all of the pieces serving as source documents for the curriculum, including CAPM preparation and PM basics from IIL. They can all be accessed via the following site: http://ingo.sharepoint.apptix.net/ngopmi/working/contextualization/default.aspx.

Two of these resources are good at providing general PMI basics and the others are good on topics specific to the INGO sector such as log frames, monitoring and evaluation. The Habitat for Humanity document attempts to blend both NGO and PMI topics. The Asian development bank document is particularly good at explaining log frames.

We now need to focus heavily on contextualization so that a curriculum can be finished by the late September pilot in the Philippines. Ron Anderson from Habitat for Humanity (a WG member) has agreed to lead the process as the contextualization representative to the WG. But, he won’t be actively involved in the contextualization process and can’t put in many hours. Thus, Mike will be focusing significantly on this for the next month or so.

Mike has three fundamental questions/issues for staff:

1.  Can staff help develop a general outline of what will be covered in the training pilot? The main issue here is how to combine the basic PMI process groups and/or knowledge areas with the INGO topics (log frames, monitoring and evaluation). Should log frames come first? Where should M & E fit?

Caren and Kay agreed to review the documents to help answer this first set of questions and develop a draft curriculum outline.

2.  The IIL curriculua are extremely dry. Mike asked Caren and Kay how they make it more interesting for participants. Both use particular cases and experiences to make the principles real. Caren suggested using the concept of planning a wedding or delivering supplies throughout to demonstrate key principles.

It was agreed that Leslie and Mike would begin to data-mine the curriculua we have to identify good stories/cases/examples for use within the new curriculum. Caren and Kay will also think about good ways to contextualize. We need to come up with a strategy for the use of cases. They are absent in the IIL documents and Mike/Leslie are not sure where/how to insert them most effectively.

3.  The third question is more of a tension that needs to be addressed, though there are no immediate action points relating to it. Primarily, there is tension between the desire to provide a course that will lead to some kind of certification via PMI (case A) and the need to be practical/pragmatic in providing tools/skills participants will use immediately (case B). The pilot course will be entry-level PMs in the Philippines who have likely never had PM training before. Is the curriculum for Case A different from the curriculum for Case B?

DECISIONS/ACTION ITEMS

1.  Caren and Kay will review the curriculum source documents and propose a curriculum outline to Mike by Friday of this week.

2.  Mike and Leslie will beging data-mining and Caren and Kay will think about how their experience/examples could be used to contextualize

3.  Regarding question 3, Mike will send out occasional questions to the group as his thinking evolves.