The importance of planning

All development projects normally pass through a certain sequence.

Of course monitoring and evaluation may yield information that then may have to be fed back into the system in order to carry out the necessary modifications. Often, however, the process is interrupted, or aborted, or a certain stage in the project cycle may, for various reasons, be overlooked. Thus very often, after a project has been implemented, the project holders fail either to set up a monitoring mechanism to keep track on the progress of the project, or they fail to carry out an evaluation. We shall come back to these later. Here, we discuss the first stage in the journey of the project.

Whether it is a group or an individual project, the importance of careful planning before actually embarking on the project cannot be overemphasised. Most mistakes are made well before the first purchase is made for a project. And since experience, particularly from a project that has failed, is a better guide to drawing out lessons and guidelines, we shall start with one such project.

Sequences of Development Projects