Phases of a Social Project

But first: What is a Social Project?

A social project is a group of activities of an enterprise or organization that have well-defined results, goals, and impact.

According to some definitions of the United Nations (UN), a social project is born from planning that aims to solve certain problems, or even to meet some kind of shortage of a region or group of people. Master Umanitar, as a global social enterprise, understands this same meaning and works its methodology according to this criterion.

A social project is made to offer support and assistance to a cause, but it does not have to be a specific cause. The branch of the study of this method covers projects of economic development, inclusion, Umanitar, cultural, environmental, youth, elderly, needy communities, animal protection, and all others.

In our methodology, a social project is not considered the activities related to the administration of the social organization, fundraising activities, and the like. These would be just organizational activities that have enormous importance but do not enter our specific field of study in this certification and methodology.

The Life Cycle

• Project Drawing

Drawing is the initial stage of any project. It is at this point that the manager should analyse the project from a macro view. Understand what are the goals you want to achieve, what problems you want to solve, identify the needs and feasibility.

It is necessary to identify the main points of the projects because this phase usually aims at the search for financing or authorization to continue the project. Therefore, at this stage, the manager must-have materials and a foundation to convince stakeholders that the project is viable and that it is important for society.

In the specific case of social projects this phase usually happens before funding and needs to be efficient for fundraising. The processes of this phase should therefore help the manager to build materials and documents that facilitate the presentation of the project in public notices, for possible investors, for the government,and even for his team, which must embark with him on the mission after this is approved.

• Planning

In the planning phase, the information requires a higher level of detail. Reaching this stage means that the project has been approved and that the company believes that the efforts will generate results.

Therefore, planning models must be consistent to structure a good plan that leads the project to success. Additionally, it is crucial to invest in the best possible detail of each document, avoiding future errors, unforeseen and unnecessary risks.

The project models should provide for the measurement of the objectives and what will be needed to meet these points. That is, it is necessary to list all the points, ranging from monetary values to the amount of labour force involved. The tools that will be used and how the tasks will be distributed can also be entered here.

Our methodology presents both the scenario for traditional management planning and the agile scenario.

• Execution

During the execution phase, the focus is the exercise of what was planned. That is, it is at this time that all the processes defined in planning are executed.

Therefore, the manager must have a set of documents that ensure the monitoring of activities and the registration of deliveries. Thus, it will be easier to measure the evolution of the project and the activities of the teams.

In this sense, it is essential that there is a record of the progress of each team and that partial conclusions of the scope are documented.

In execution, changes in the scope, and also in quality requirements, often occur. Project models should contemplate means of carrying out these interactions.

In other words, the project can be seen as a living organism. No matter how efficient the planning is, there will always be unforeseen events and changes in direction. Therefore, the team needs to be ready to deal with changes,
incorporating the new goals fluidly and preventing this from having a big impact on deadlines and final results.

This information was extracted from the Official Umanitar Academy Workbook.

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