Thesis:

Contribution Of Operations Strategies To Project Management Competences : A Case Study Of Selected Development Projects In Rwanda

The long term success of projects arise from day to day achievements. The importance of day to day operations is to verify that project outputs continue to support the project purpose because the good completion of daily operation will definitely lead to successful and sustainable projects. Projects do not always run according to plan and no project can be perfect. One of the recipes of a business success is operations strategy. This lead to the subject matter of this research; “contribution of operations strategies to project management competences”. This research focuses on public sector projects that have both direct and indirect customers. Those projects are planned and specific operations strategies are predetermined in order to deliver the best to the population. The objectives of this research are; to identify the commonly used operations strategies in the selected projects, to determine the knowledge characteristics involved in operation strategy formulation for selected projects, to assess the extent to which operations strategies affect project management competences (input, processes and output) and to determine the perceived appropriateness of strategy employed based on project management competences. The content of this study covers a general introduction on operations strategies and project management competences. Existing related literature was reviewed in order to know what other researchers and authors have said about operations strategies and project management competences. A population of 137 respondents was selected from three projects (EASSDP, RSSP and LWH) and a questionnaire was designed to collect data from respondents. Data was collected and analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS) program. In chapter four of this research operations strategies in place in the selected projects were identified, the knowledge characteristics involved in operations strategy formulation were determined, the extent to which operation strategies contribute to project management competences was assessed and the appropriateness of strategy employed based on project management competences was determined. Data analysis proved that though operations strategies and project management competences are recipes for project success, some operations strategies such as cost leadership and time strategies affect project management competences at different levels. It is therefore concluded in chapter five; last part of this research that in the implementation of operations strategies project management competences have to be considered in order to run projects effectively and efficiently.