Contents

Introduction: Project management is a profession, not a personality trait 2

Why everyone thinks they are a project manager — and why most are not 3

The science you must actually learn (and use) 3

Sector deep-dive: humanitarian, development, and private-for-profit 4

Environmental and social safeguards: from paper to practice. 5

Economic and political volatility: the determining variable. 8

When project management becomes practically impossible in sub-aaharan Africa. 8

Government implementers versus development and private managers. 9

What the “Art” looks like when it is real 9

Handholding novices: putting the blueprint into action (especially when government wants to lead) 10

Conclusion: academic excellence and professional practice—a necessary fusion. 12

Author biography

Israel C. Chauke is a humanitarian and development projects management expert with more than three decades of delivery leadership across Southern, Central, Eastern, and Western Africa. His practice spans project and programme management unit design, multi-donor portfolio governance, public financial management, monitoring, evaluation and learning, supply chain, health systems strengthening, and environmental and social safeguards for large conservation and public health grants. He has led or advised portfolios funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the United States Agency for International Development, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, and the World Bank, among others, with country work in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, and Kenya. He is a Global Environment Facility Agency–accredited safeguards and compliance practitioner and currently supports Conservation International and the Government of Angola on safeguards adoption for national parks.

He holds a Master’s in International Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, a Master of Science in Development Economics and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Economics. His academic foundation is reinforced by professional diplomas in Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Project Management, and Purchasing Management, alongside certifications in Development Project Management (Project DPro) and Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL DPro).

He is unapologetic about project management as a scientific practice because lives, public trust, capital, and ecosystems are at stake—not egos and that includes the application of the discipline: a real work breakdown structure, a scheduled and computed critical path, a time-phased budget with funded contingencies, governance that makes time-boxed decisions, risk registers with expected monetary value and owned responses, quality gates that close non-conformances, and environmental and social safeguards that operate inside activities with auditable evidence.

Introduction: Project management is a profession, not a personality trait

Project management is often mistaken for coordination with enthusiasm. In reality, it is the disciplined application of systems engineering, managerial finance, decision science, and behavioral governance under uncertainty. The art of project management is the judgement to trade one risk for another in order to protect outcomes. The science of project management is the repeatable method that makes those trade-offs defendable, auditable, and ethical.

Why this matters:

Translation from intent to baselines. Professional project managers convert vision into a baselined plan that includes a fully decomposed scope using a Work Breakdown Structure, a logic-linked schedule with a computed critical path and resource calendars, and a time-phased cost baseline that includes funded contingency and management reserves.
Governance that makes decisions. Effective governance specifies a sponsor who owns benefits and risk appetite, a change control board that manages the configuration baseline, and a decision calendar that forces time-boxed approvals, rejections, or re-baselines.
Performance management based on facts. Real control uses Earned Value Management with a Schedule Performance Index and a Cost Performance Index, forecast-to-complete and estimate at completion, and variance analysis tied to corrective actions that actually close.
Safeguards that operate, not decorate. Environmental, social, labour, community health and safety, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment, cultural heritage, and free, prior and informed consent are not side tasks; they are operating controls that must run inside activities.
Evidence that changes the plan. Monitoring, evaluation and learning must drive adaptive management so that the project changes direction when reality changes.

This article distinguishes humanitarian, development, and private-for-profit project management; explains why many professionals mistake activity lists for delivery; and shows why economic and political volatility in Sub-Saharan Africa often dominates feasibility. A deep safeguards section demonstrates how environmental and social safeguards work in the real world—where paper intent must survive field conditions.

Why everyone thinks they are a project manager — and why most are not

Timelines are not schedules. A spreadsheet of dates is not a schedule. A professional schedule contains a Work Breakdown Structure, dependency logic, leads and lags, resource calendars, and a computed critical path. Without these, promised dates are optimism theatre.

Noise is not governance. Seniority and volume do not equal sponsorship. Sponsorship means owning benefits, funding decisions, and risk appetite within a predictable cadence of steering committees, change control boards, and risk reviews that end in written decisions.

Activity is not value. Busy teams can deliver nothing. Projects exist to change a baseline. Without a benefits realization plan, measurable acceptance criteria, and a named benefits owner after handover, you have motion without meaning.

Slide colors are not performance. Traffic-light status reports collapse under scrutiny. Professional control uses Earned Value Management, a Schedule Performance Index, a Cost Performance Index, estimate-to-complete, and variance analysis linked to funded corrective actions.

Real example. A national vaccination campaign published “activation days” without resource-loading cold chain equipment or fuel. Logistics failed on day two when refrigerated trucks queued for diesel. A small project office rebuilt the plan with a critical path in which fuel availability and driver hours were the constraints. Deliveries recovered within one week. The difference was method, not charisma.

The science you must actually learn (and use)

Business case discipline. Define the problem and the options; quantify cost of delay; compute risk-adjusted net present value; set explicit go or no-go criteria. Specify who owns the benefits after project closure.

Scope and change control. Decompose scope into a Work Breakdown Structure; freeze the configuration baseline; run change requests through a configuration control board; document the impact on schedule, cost, and risk; maintain a searchable decision log.

Schedule integrity. Build a network with a computed critical path and resource calendars; perform schedule risk analysis using simulation; insert risk-based buffers; maintain a recovery playbook for slippages on the true drivers of the critical path.

Financial stewardship. Time-phase the budget; maintain budget versus actuals, estimate at completion, and cash-flow; link payments to deliverable acceptance and compliance evidence; keep reserves in the budget, not in emails.

Risk and issue management. Operate a living risk register with probability, impact, expected monetary value, triggers, responses, and owners; escalate issues with decision options and deadlines; refresh risk exposure as new information arrives.

Quality and assurance. Define acceptance criteria, sampling plans, and quality gates; run root-cause analysis using five whys and fishbone diagrams; verify that corrective actions are closed with evidence.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning. Build a results framework from inputs to outputs to outcomes to impact; set baselines and targets; define data sources and data quality checks; make adaptive management meetings mandatory so evidence changes plans.

People and interfaces. Clarify a Responsible–Accountable–Consulted–Informed matrix; run a decision calendar; align incentives so that early truth beats late heroics.

Real example. A primary healthcare information system rollout failed twice due to uncontrolled change. On the third attempt, the team froze a configuration baseline, created a change board, and required every change request to state the impact on the critical path and the estimate at completion. The system went live in two districts first, then scaled safely.

Sector deep-dive: humanitarian, development, and private-for-profit

Humanitarian delivery in crisis

Context. Lives at risk; time and access dominate feasibility. Ethical standards such as the Sphere standards and the Core Humanitarian Standard, and safeguarding, are non-negotiable.

Example: Cholera outbreak in a dense informal settlement.

Objective. Reduce the case fatality rate below one percent within six weeks.
Method. Use an Incident Command System with daily planning cells for operations, clinical services, logistics, and epidemiology; pre-position water, sanitation and hygiene supplies; link outbreak analytics to micro-targeted chlorination and oral rehydration points.
Professional mechanics. Ninety-six-hour rolling plan; resource-constrained critical path that recognizes chlorine deliveries, available truck hours, and security escort windows; risk triage with pre-approved playbooks for road closures and violence.
What separates professionals. Evidence-based trade-offs between coverage and clinical quality, routine rapid after-action reviews that change tomorrow’s plan, and transparent communication about which wards will be prioritized and why.

Development programmes for systems strengthening

Context. Institutional capacity and policy alignment matter as much as outputs. Compliance with environmental and social safeguards, procurement, and audits is heavy.

Example: Five-district primary healthcare strengthening.

Objective. Increase facility readiness scores and outpatient utilization; make the health management information system usable for district decision-making.
Method. Map benefits from inputs to outcomes; finalize an Environmental and Social Management Plan and a Stakeholder Engagement Plan; sequence districts by readiness; run competency-based training and supportive supervision; deploy dashboards for routine management.
Professional mechanics. Site-readiness gates, vendor service levels, change control on clinical protocols, quarterly benefits reviews with the ministry of health.
What separates professionals. Protecting the critical path from fiscal-year cash freezes, securing minimal viable capability that still moves outcomes when perfect infrastructure slips, and keeping operations and maintenance budgets in scope.

Private-for-profit projects in competitive markets

Context. Return on investment, time-to-value, regulatory approvals, and reputational risk dominate.

Example: Ten diagnostic laboratories in tier-two cities.

Objective. Open ten laboratories with positive unit economics within twelve months.
Method. Stage-gate governance (site identification, permits, fit-out, validation), portfolio balancing across cities, risk hedges for supply chain and currency movements, and contract escalators for inflation.
Professional mechanics. Net present value under demand uncertainty, capacity modeling, time-to-value metrics, and fast “kill-keep-combine” portfolio decisions when macroeconomic conditions shift.
What separates professionals. Disciplined descoping that preserves value and timely closure of underperforming sites to protect the whole.

Environmental and social safeguards: from paper to practice

Safeguards are the operating system for responsible delivery. They are not decorative annexes. They are a two-phase discipline: a foundational phase that sets the rails, and an integration phase that runs the controls under load.

Foundational phase: Set the rails before any fieldwork

Screening and categorization. Determine overall risk category using the funding agency’s taxonomy. Identify triggers: critical habitat, involuntary resettlement and economic displacement, free, prior and informed consent for Indigenous Peoples, cultural heritage, labour and working conditions, community health and safety, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, security risk, and unexploded ordnance.

Biophysical and social baselines. Map habitats, key biodiversity areas, high conservation value zones, species of concern, wildlife corridors, water availability, fire regimes, and climate risks. In parallel, profile land and resource tenure, livelihood strategies, poverty and vulnerability, gender-based risks, community health and safety, and cultural heritage. Build a geographic information system that anchors all later monitoring.

Planning instruments.

Environmental and Social Management Plan with a compliance matrix linking each risk to a control, an indicator, an evidence source, a frequency, an owner, and a budget line.
Biodiversity Action Plan, including the mitigation hierarchy of avoid, minimize, restore, and offset; seasonal windows; and a pathway to “no net loss” or net positive impact where required.
Human-wildlife conflict plan, invasive species management plan, fire management plan, and security and emergency response plan.
Stakeholder Engagement Plan with a grievance mechanism standard operating procedure, service level agreements for response times, and multilingual channels including community meetings, boxes, hotlines, and a WhatsApp line where appropriate.
Gender action plan with survivor-centred prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment protocols and mapped referral partners.
Labour and working conditions plan, and community health and safety plan.
Cultural heritage management and chance-finds procedures.
Free, prior and informed consent plan for Indigenous Peoples, where applicable.

Institutionalisation and systems. Define a Responsible–Accountable–Consulted–Informed matrix across the project management unit, the park authority, contractors, and community committees. Embed environmental and social clauses into procurement and contracts, including payment holdbacks for non-compliance. Prepare induction modules for every role. Stand up a grievance database, an incident and near-miss log, and dashboards for biodiversity and social indicators.

Readiness audit and go or no-go. Demarcate no-go zones and seasonal buffers on the ground; post signage and grievance contacts; complete inductions; verify permits; test the hotline and the grievance database end-to-end. Issue a go-live only when the readiness checklist is passed with no critical failures.

Real example. In a multi-park conservation programme in Southern Africa, foundational work identified nesting periods for endangered raptors and mapped pastoral migration routes. The go-live criteria forced a re-sequencing of works to avoid breeding seasons and to maintain livestock water access. This prevented predictable conflict.

Integration phase: Run the controls inside the work

Daily and weekly routines. Conduct toolbox talks each morning; complete site checklists; log near misses and incidents; triage grievances into categories with service level agreements (for example, three days for acknowledgement, ten days for response, and thirty days for resolution); record evidence of closure.

Performance-linked delivery. Link contractor payment certificates and work approvals to environmental and social performance. Use withholdings for non-compliance and incentives for sustained compliance.

Monitoring to adaptation. Update biodiversity and social indicators monthly—such as habitat condition scores, occupancy or abundance of priority species, functionality of wildlife corridors, household livelihood scores, and incidence of human-wildlife conflict. Record adaptive actions using the mitigation hierarchy and show the before-and-after effect.

Stakeholder engagement that matters. Deliver the Stakeholder Engagement Plan calendar; document free, prior and informed consent steps when required; and publish short, accessible summaries of how grievances are resolved.

Stop rules that bite. Suspend work where free, prior and informed consent is withheld in the affected footprint; pause and redesign where predicted impacts exceed the approved pathway to no net loss; immediately activate the survivor-centred protocol when a credible allegation of sexual exploitation and abuse or sexual harassment is received.

Independent assurance. Commission mid-term and pre-closure audits; publish a management response with time-bound corrective actions; verify closure.

Real example. A contractor proposed fencing during antelope calving season to “save time.” The Biodiversity Action Plan’s seasonal window and the contract’s stop rule halted the activity. The sequence was redesigned to complete trails in non-sensitive areas, move community training forward, and delay heavy machinery. The project finished two weeks later but achieved the ecological objective and avoided reputational damage. That delay was value-creating, not wasteful.

What goes wrong when safeguards are treated as standalone tasks

Evidence disappears because nothing runs: no incidents recorded, no grievances logged, no biodiversity trend lines produced.
Payments flow without consequence because they are not linked to environmental and social performance.
Communities lose trust because they see posters and hear meetings, but do not see timely resolution and visible changes on the ground.
Donor and regulatory risk rises because there is nothing to audit except paper.

Professional bottom line. Paper proves intent. Operations prove compliance. Responsible managers insist that safeguards operate inside activities and are tied to money and schedule.

Economic and political volatility: the determining variable

Volatility in Sub-Saharan Africa frequently overwhelms well-made plans.

Foreign exchange devaluation and hard-currency scarcity. Import paralysis and vendor exits occur when local currency collapses.
Countermeasures. Foreign exchange–indexed pricing, multi-currency hedging, regional procurement, buffer stocks of critical spares and reagents, and automatic re-baselining when currency crosses pre-agreed thresholds.

Inflation spikes and fuel shortages. Logistics halt and budgets erode.
Countermeasures. Contract escalation clauses, rolling estimate at completion updates, fuel framework agreements, and modular scope with minimum viable increments.

Political transitions and abrupt policy swings. Permit reversals and arrears appear overnight.
Countermeasures. Scenario planning with pre-cleared options, legal structuring that protects assets, diversified partnerships, and documented stop-work and exit criteria.

Regulatory unpredictability. Import bans, price controls, and data-localization mandates can invalidate designs.
Countermeasures. Compliance scanning, dual sourcing of critical components, and architecture that reduces regulatory exposure.

Real illustrations.

A national fuel shock raised transport costs by two hundred percent in three weeks. The cholera team reprioritized “marginal impact per liter of fuel,” moved to decentralized chlorination points, negotiated emergency fuel frameworks, and adopted daily rolling forecasts. The case fatality rate still fell below one percent.
A diagnostics chain saw dollar-denominated reagents become unaffordable. The portfolio lead activated indexed pricing with payers, consolidated low-throughput sites, renegotiated supplier terms, and froze non-essential capital expenditure. The business survived to reinvest later.

When project management becomes practically impossible in sub-aaharan Africa

Public sector structural constraints

Chronic cash-flow gaps, procurement cycles longer than the project, foreign exchange rationing, permit reversals, and unreliable utilities can defeat any plan. The honest act is to re-baseline to a minimum viable capability, pause with a documented decision, or exit.

Private sector economic vetoes

Runaway inflation with price controls, capital controls and banking distress, non-permissive security corridors, and regulatory whiplash can erase unit economics. The professional response is to mothball, salvage assets, or exit while protecting investors and staff.

Ethical statement. Knowing when to stop is a core competence. Pretending feasibility is unethical.

Government implementers versus development and private managers

Public officials implementing public projects are often assessed on obligation of budget and procedural correctness. Success can mean spending the allocation and commissioning an asset.
Development and private sector managers are assessed on outcome per unit resource with external assurance. Success means adoption, utilization, and sustainability after handover—even when the funds are public.

Real example. A publicly funded water scheme achieved construction milestones but delivered no household connections due to zero operations budgets. A development-style rescue plan reframed scope to a minimum viable service in two wards with ring-fenced operating finance and community revenue collection. Real people received water; the remainder was mothballed pending credible operations funding.

What the “Art” looks like when it is real

Trade-off literacy. Explicitly state which benefit you will protect and which risk you will accept, with consequences quantified.
Narrative control. Convert analytics—Schedule Performance Index, Cost Performance Index, and monitoring, evaluation and learning findings—into optioned decisions such as: “Approve Plan B with a four percent cost increase for a three-week time reduction, or hold scope for a seven-week delay and an additional two hundred thousand United States dollars in expected monetary value of risk.”
Constraint design. Engineer deliverables that fit permits, seasons, access windows, and political calendars without destroying outcomes.
Incentive alignment. Tie payments to accepted deliverables and compliance; judge sponsors on realized benefits, not on attendance at meetings.

Real example. A protected-area project faced a two-month nesting window that would close access. The manager resequenced works, brought forward community training, delayed heavy machinery, and protected the ecological objective with only a two-week slip. That was artistry built on science.

Handholding novices: putting the blueprint into action (especially when government wants to lead)

Why handholding is essential. Many institutions want to be “in charge,” especially governments—and they should be. But ownership without method turns aspiration into delay. Handholding is not micromanagement; it is scaffolded capability transfer with verifiable milestones that bring novices from coordination to professional delivery.

Without the blueprint: Timelines are political, procurement takes twelve months, and fuel shortages stall contractors. Grievances spike because no channel exists. After two years, fifty percent of funds are spent, but usable kilometers are below twenty percent.

With the blueprint: In six weeks, the department has a baselined scope, a computed critical path that accounts for procurement lead times, a risk register that prices foreign exchange exposure, and an Environmental and Social Management Plan integrated into contracts. In the next quarter, a junior civil servant follows the shadow–co-pilot–lead progression, and by month three runs the weekly governance cycle. Grievances are logged and resolved within a service level agreement; payments are tied to compliance; sections open in minimum viable increments aligned to the rainy season. The political narrative shifts from promises to evidence.

The blueprint does not humiliate novices; it professionalizes them. It converts “we are in charge” into “we are accountable”—with method, data and safeguards that operate in the real world.

A “blueprint to practice” onboarding

Week 0 – Mobilization and baselines. Confirm the business case (problem, options, benefits, risk appetite, go or no-go criteria) and name a benefits owner. Stand up governance: sponsor, steering committee calendar, change control board, and escalation routes with time-boxed decisions. Publish the project management office configuration and a Responsible–Accountable–Consulted–Informed matrix.
Scope and product thinking. Run a product breakdown workshop; decompose scope into a Work Breakdown Structure with acceptance criteria. Freeze the scope baseline and enforce the rule: no changes without a signed request stating schedule, cost, and risk impacts.
Schedule integrity. Build a logic-linked schedule with a computed critical path, resource calendars, leads, and lags. Conduct schedule risk analysis using simulation; insert risk-based buffers and a recovery playbook.
Financial stewardship. Time-phase the budget; establish budget versus actuals, estimate at completion, and cash-flow. Tie payments to deliverable acceptance and compliance evidence (including environmental and social safeguards).
Risk, issues, and quality. Stand up a risk register with probability, impact, expected monetary value, triggers, responses, owners, and funded contingency. Define quality gates and sampling; practice five whys and fishbone root-cause analysis.
Environmental and social safeguards. Operate the foundational package (Environmental and Social Management Plan, Stakeholder Engagement Plan and grievance mechanism, biodiversity and human-wildlife conflict controls, labour and community health and safety, cultural heritage, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment, and free, prior and informed consent where required). Run a readiness audit with a go or no-go.
Monitoring, evaluation and learning. Publish a results framework with baselines, targets, data sources, and data quality checks; institute a monthly adaptive management meeting where evidence changes the plan. Agree stop rules that automatically pause work at thresholds (for example, withheld free, prior and informed consent or predicted critical habitat loss beyond the agreed pathway to “no net loss”).

Outputs after six weeks: A baselined Work Breakdown Structure, a credible schedule with a computed critical path, a time-phased budget with reserves, a funded risk register, operational safeguards, and a monitoring, evaluation and learning dashboard—plus a governance rhythm that makes decisions.

Shadow–co-pilot–lead progression (3 month example)

Month 1 – Shadow. The novice observes professional facilitation of planning, change control, and safeguards readiness audits; they draft artifacts but do not own decisions.
Month 2 – Co-pilot. The novice runs selected rituals (one change board, one risk review, one field day of safeguards integration), with the expert present.
Month 3 – Lead with guardrails. The novice leads the full weekly cycle—schedule review, budget versus actuals, risk and issue board, safeguards evidence pack—while the expert only intervenes on threshold breaches.

Graduation criterion: The novice produces an auditable trail—plan, variance, decision, corrective action, and closure evidence—without rescue.

Government ownership pathway (for public implementers “in charge”)

Policy-to-portfolio bridge. Translate the policy pledge into a benefits map with a named benefits owner in the ministry; define outcome indicators and who will fund operations and maintenance after handover.
Delivery compact. Sign a compact between sponsor and delivery unit with service levels for decisions, finance access, and procurement timelines.
Hardened governance. Fix a quarterly decision day; decisions not taken are recorded as risks with quantified exposure and are reported publicly.
Institutionalized safeguards. Bake environmental and social clauses into all procurements; link contractor payments to compliance; publish grievance resolution times and biodiversity or social indicators where appropriate.
Capability maturity model. Assess at start and at six months across five domains—planning, financial stewardship, risk and issues, safeguards integration, and benefits realization—with independently verified evidence.

Debunking the “everyone is a project manager” theory

Many people insist that “everyone is a project manager” because everyone coordinates tasks. Coordination is an input; project management is a science with testable outputs. A person has not crossed the threshold into professional practice until they can plan, implement, and control all facets simultaneously: scope defined by a Work Breakdown Structure with acceptance criteria; a schedule with a computed critical path and risk buffers; a time-phased budget with budget versus actuals and an estimate at completion; a risk register with expected monetary value and enacted responses; quality gates with closed corrective actions; environmental and social safeguards operated inside activities with auditable evidence and stop rules; a results framework where monitoring, evaluation and learning changes the plan; and governance that makes written decisions and manages the configuration baseline. Until that exists—and is evidenced—the claim remains unproven. Project management is a science because its methods are falsifiable: either the critical path predicts slippage or it does not; either safeguards generate field evidence or they do not.

Until a person delivers all of the above with an auditable trail—plan, variance, decision, corrective action, and closure—they have not left the realm of “coordination.” The theory that “everyone is a project manager” collapses the moment an individual is actually tasked to design the baseline, operate controls under volatility, and account publicly for outcomes. Project management is a science because its methods are falsifiable: either the critical path exists and predicts slippage, or it does not; either safeguards produce field evidence, or they do not.

Conclusion: academic excellence and professional practice—a necessary fusion

Academic excellence gives project managers the grammar of the discipline: how to construct a Work Breakdown Structure, how to compute a critical path, how to run Earned Value Management and interpret a Schedule Performance Index and a Cost Performance Index, how to size risk reserves using expected monetary value, how to design a results framework for monitoring, evaluation and learning, and how to assemble a credible Environmental and Social Management Plan with enforceable controls for biodiversity, labour and working conditions, community health and safety, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment, cultural heritage, and free, prior and informed consent. This is the science.

Professional practice then demands courage and judgement: courage to publish uncomfortable facts, to pause work when free, prior and informed consent is withheld, to redesign when predicted impacts exceed the approved pathway to no net loss, and to re-baseline when foreign exchange, inflation, or politics make the original promise dishonest; judgement to trade schedule for biodiversity or cost for safety; discipline to link money to compliance and to close corrective actions. This is the art.

The highest standard in our field is neither elegance of plan nor eloquence of presentation. It is the ability to deliver predictable value—with safeguards that actually operate—in places where volatility, politics, and scarcity conspire against success. That is why professional project management is not for everyone. It is for those who can quantify risk, price contingency, operate safeguards inside real activities, defend trade-offs, and accept public accountability for outcomes.

If you cannot do those things, you are not managing a project—you are narrating one

The Art of Project Management