Towards the Advancement of Project Management Practice in Developing Countries : The Case of Nigeria

Project Management in most developing countries today continues to be fractured in its structure and approach thereby triggering high degrees of failure, abandonment or collapse of most government and private organisation projects. The resultant effect of this has been a colossal wastage of scarce resources as well as deficiencies on the overall developmental needs within such countries. Previous studies revealed that, factors such as flawed project management practices have been responsible for such occurrences. In response to the aforementioned, this paper utilised a focus group comprising of selected project management practitioners to examine current trends in project management practice in developing countries. The findings identified several factors including the incompetence of project management practitioners and the lack of understanding of the rudiments of project management as major barriers towards the advancement of project management in developing countries. The paper noted that regardless of the size of projects undertaken in developing countries, basic project management strategies must be adopted by government and private organisations. It also proposed that such strategies should not be a mere transfer from developed countries but must give thoughtful consideration to peculiar cultural factors affecting developing countries. The paper concluded by making recommendations for project management stakeholders within developing countries to purposefully instigate measures that sustain project management culture and to ensure that well-structured project governance frameworks are established and adhered to