Project Management and the Goal of Evaluation

¶ … personal experience with program management is that the program manager has to interact with the project manager and communicate with him so that the two are coordinated in pursuing the same overall goals -- otherwise there will be lost time and wasted opportunities to actually build on and improve the system that they are tasked with upgrading and developing. Communication is the key issue in this relationship and it cannot be stressed enough that goals are outlined and clear to all and that every member within the program management team be aware of these goals and how they impact a very complex project that requires systematic overhaul.

Reading Establishing Health Care Quality as a National Priority has helped to clarify my project design by reminding me of how important it is to provide quality care to the public and how important strong leadership is in that process. As the report shows, leadership starts at the top and trickles down from the President to those in health care working to achieve nationally identified aims: thus, the report recommends the "creation of a concise set of national aims for improvement" (AHRQ, n.d.). With respect to my project design, I look forward to showing why leadership is needed in health care to ensure that these aims are being identified by the organization, strategies developed to help the organization achieve them, and goals set for employees that assist them in overcoming obstacles by providing them a clear sense of what they are supposed to be striving toward. So often it happens that workers have no sense of what it is that they are supposed to working for, and it is because leadership fails to stand up and give them the clear sign that they need. For my project, I want this to be at the core of what it means to have real development and progress in health care.

Discussion Question 3

Program evaluation is an important part of program design because without it there can be no sense that what is being achieved through the design process is actually working or getting the job done. Evaluation is critical for success in that it shows where the project is succeeding and where it is coming up short. If there is no evaluation performed, an inadequate program design could be used by a lot of people that ends up causing more problems that need to be addressed later on. This leads to cost inflation and time wasted on exploring alternative options.

Program evaluation is thus a critical aspect of program design because it allows designers to go over their accomplishments, their strategies and their aims to see if what they thought would work is actually working. It gives them a measure by which they can gauge the effectiveness of their actions and ensures that they are not leaving any gaps behind in their work that will need to be filled later on.