Assessment On Practices And Challenges Of Consultancy Project Management: The Case Of Ethiopian Management Institute

EMI is one of the oldest as well as the prominent firm that delivers management consultancy services for government and other organizations for more than 50 years. However, the institute has passed through many challenges in managing the time and the quality of its constancy services. This study focused on analyzing the challenges of Consultancy Project Management Practices of the Institute. Descriptive research method was applied to find out EMI management consultancy projects practices and challenges. Both primary and secondary data were collected using structured questionnaires, interviews, and focused group discussions. The quantitative data were analyzed by descriptive statistical tools such as frequency distribution, percentage, mean score and mean score average. Qualitative data obtain through the semi structured interview, FGD, it was healed in EMI with consultants they identified human resource allocation, client's commitment to give feedback, organize and document lesson learned and weak contractual administration are the challenges in consultancy projects and documents such as plans ( GTP1,GTP2 and 2015 Good governance),reports( GTP1 performance report and 2015 annual plan performance report)and TOR review have been classified, categorized and registered under thematic areas and presented in narration. The finding reveals that EMI does have major gaps in preparation and implementations of Zorientation session with clients, and detail assignment plan preparation and problem diagnosis. Developing strong alternative solution with their respective merits and demerits is a major gap. Implementation phase of consultancy services is not practice in EMI and monitoring, evaluation and closure phase practice are weak as compared to other phases. Lack of required resources, lack of client commitment, and lack of competency of consultants, weak contractual administration, lack of strong monitoring and evaluation system, client needs fluctuations, poor incentive mechanism and lack of commitment of consultants are ...