That is surely a question that deserves elaboration and I am quite sure will shed more light on the contribution of international development to project management as a discipline!

Please join the conversation!

Thank you and it will certainly help generate interest and develop ideas for the special issue...

It maybe good starting point to explore the definitions. In her TED Talk, Alanna Shaikh, an International Development (ID) practitioner claims that ID is ill defined. She argues that "ID is surprisingly personal and if you want to get involved in development and make a difference, you have to define it yourself: What does development mean to you? Where is the place that you want to make the change? It doesn't necessarily mean pouring more money in aid"... Nevertheless, development assistance continue to come in the form of foreign aid to developing countries.

On the other hand, Project Management (PM) could be viewed as a discipline with a much more structured and stable definitions. A project being a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result and PM being the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements (PMI, 2013). Various standards and guidelines/tools are available for project practitioners.

Coming back to ID - one of the largest funding agency of development aid is the World Bank. The Bank has adopted a "twin goals" strategy of accelerating progress towards sustainably reducing poverty and building shared prosperity. Further, it has introduced a new model for country engagement consisting of the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) and the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) which identifies focus areas for World Bank Group support that aligns with the country's development agenda considering the most critical constraints and opportunities (see the recent Sep 2017 report on assessment of the SCD and CPF including case studies of 22 countries) . It appears that much emphasis is given to the context.

Continuing with the example of the World Bank, the intersection of ID and PM is perhaps, the point where development projects are conceived and implemented for the delivery of the change, resulting from the country engagement model. But what sets ID project management apart from traditional project management is the complexities involved in managing ID projects. The process of ID project learning could be quite different from a traditional project. For example, the success criteria and the success factors.

The lessons learned in each development context might be different. As Karl Muth puts it, development looks different in different places at different times - development is a path to be discovered. Hence, there is a great opportunity into looking at narratives of how ID projects are implemented in various contexts. It may  provide insights of the contributions from ID to PM, which can in turn be applied to other projects.

[Note: Comments/critiques are most welcome - these are my food for thought!]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R08tIdvs0AY&index=127&list=WL

http://ieg.worldbankgroup.org/evaluations/scd-cpf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztpJ9Puzio