Assessment of the Project Planning Practices of the Floriculture Project, A Case of Holleta Flower Producers Cluster

Abstract

The Ethiopian Horticulture sector stays the fourth in a foreign direct investment earning in the country and making Ethiopia the second largest exporter in Africa next to Kenya. Since the beginning, 72 flower farms have been constructed and export rose to the EU, USA, Japan, and the middle east. The main objective of the study was to assess the planning practice of Holleta rose growers. The cluster was considered purposively because more than five farms were bankrupted due to poor planning and performance. From all ten farms, a total of 200 personnel was selected using a stratified sampling technique, creating a homogeneous group of farm owners, farm managers, production managers, team leaders, and workers. After the selection, a sampling formula used to funnel 133 workers for data collection using questionnaires, interviews, and observations. The survey result shows that 90% of the respondents fall within the age group of 20 to 40, which are productive groups. On the other hand, 69.9% of the respondents were female, addressing the issue of gender. The main findings of this study show that 75% of respondents agreed that the implementation of the project knowledge area is below average, despite 81.3% and 82.3% of the respondent agreed the project procurement and human resource planning practice of all the farms are good. Besides 92% of respondents and the document review revealed that the planning phase directly affects the success of a given flower farm production and marketing, 68.4 % of respondents respond that the communication of project activities is not good in line with this 83.1 % of agreed that workers have not participated in the planning of farm project activities. Besides, the Gant chart, critical path, and project software were used in the planning process while the farm performance is still low. Hence, the study recommends, to minimize the gap between the practices and the theories, the farms should look into its practices and take an evaluation, restructuring, and corrective actions in line with these policymakers and implementers of the horticulture sector should revise all phases of the project planning, in particular to Holleta cluster.