Continued development of the Project Management Methodology System
Council of Europe, Strasbourg – France
The total contract duration will be five years from the date of its signature
Deadline: 6/1/2023
Council of Europe’s project management method (PMM): Council of Europe’s Project Management Methodology is a tailor-made approach for enhancing the project management of the Council of Europe’s cooperation sector (i.e., development aid/technical support) and strengthen the link between these development programmes and the overall strategy and values of the Organisation. The overall goal of the PMM project (methodology as well as dedicated training, website and IT platform) is to facilitate the delivery of change and reform by the cooperation sector according to the Council of Europe’s Theory of Change.
The PMM IT platform ensures the practical implementation of the Organisation’s PMM methodology, standardising and harmonising business processes across the Organisation, as well as, managing project life cycles, their financial voluntary contributions, and related workflows. It facilitates the cooperation sector of the Council of Europe, (which as of 2022 encompasses more than 300 projects and programmes with a contractual value of over 200 million euros) and provides pertinent information for programmatic planning as well as results-based management. Moreover, the PMM includes a robust transversal and human-rights based management module and contributes to the CoE’s goal of evaluating activities and programmes for their efficiency and results.
The nature of future PMM developments 2023 to 2027: The PMM IT platform is continuously updated. The Council of Europe currently has dedicated resources at disposal to ensure that the system will respond to new challenges and is maintained at a high level of efficacy. Changes need to take into account new strategic needs and related working methods. The Platform is considered a mission critical tool and the Council of Europe’s ambition is that the PMM platform in its category is a leading example of a development aid project management system.
Over the next five years the system will therefore continue to be enhanced and the following types of developments are foreseen:
• Ensure a more global approach for Platform users to managing different aspects of the development cooperation sector of the Council of Europe, in close association with external partners and their equivalent systems (making sure the platform caters for all different aspects of project management- managing projects themselves, overall coordination of the sector, managing the project fundraising side, transmission of information between systems, etc.). It will be important for the external IT development company to strive for a good understanding of Council of Europe operations and their business-critical tools.
• Continuously preparing new functionalities and business processes, some of which will be extensive while others will be limited in scope. It is likely that the coming five years will include Platform rebuilding as well as gradual improvements. Design and graphic improvements may be necessary. Please note that these Platform changes need to cater for several different, distinct business user groups that use the system (project managers, supervisors, sector coordinators, fundraising coordinators);
• The Platform is already of certain maturity. It is clear that as it matures and the volume of data keeps on growing, there is also an increasing interest in developing better business intelligence and analysis based on the Platform content;
• Linking up systems: building of data mapping and data transfer between the PMM platform and external donor institutions’ systems (for example results monitoring mechanisms, by EU and others).
PMM Technical specifications: PMM has been developed under Microsoft.NET programming framework (4.5 and above) using C# programming language, ASP.NET, MVC and ASP.NET web API, Entity Framework. It uses Modern Internet framework technologies in particular jQuery, Angular, TypeScript and REST Web Services and runs under MS SQL database technology. The database contains information on projects run by the Council of Europe and is available via a Web interface.
Note that the current framework version used to develop PMM not the latest version, but an upgrade to the latest version of .Net and Angular will be part of this contract.
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