DV443      Half Unit
Development Management Consultancy Project

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

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This unit is a compulsory core half unit course for the MSc Development Management. Students work on a consultancy report in Autumn and Winter Terms.

The course draws on the core course (DV469) and enables students to gain practical experience of dealing with current policy issues and best practice in the field of international development by working as a part of a team on a live consultancy project for a real client. The consultancies are based around an experiential learning format. Clients provide Terms of Reference for the student groups to work on. Students receive guidance from academic staff through a structured supervision process and support from a staff coach through formal workshops.

Students are allocated to consultancy teams usually comprising between three and six people. Students can express preferences for particular clients but may not be allocated to one of these. The roster of clients and projects changes every year.

The consultancy project begins in Autumn Term with client reports due in the Winter Term. The client report and final presentation form part of the assessment.

The course links the practical management of a development consultancy with broader issues of managing development.

The exam at the end of the course will require students to answer a policy question where students are expected to bring together the practical and theoretical skills they have learnt over the years.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures, both from academics and development practitioners and one session dedicated to student inception report presentations in the AT. In addition, consultancy groups are expected to meet informally for two hours every week from week 2 -11 in the AT.  The course is intended to take about 30 working days per person over two terms.

The lectures focus on two elements:

1. Dealing with the administration and management of a development consultancy at a group level as well as a

2. Critical engagement with development management interventions in practice (covering topics such as managerialism and results-based management, the politics of data, accountability, professionalisation, certification and credentialism, the political economy of projects/evaluation and log frames). 

Autumn Term
Weeks 2, 3, 4 and 5: 2-hour lectures covering 1 and 2 above
Week 6: Reading Week
Weeks 8 & 9: Inception report presentations

Winter Term
Final presentations in week 11.

Summer Term

Sit down exam (date TBC).

Students will participate in consultations with coaches to assist groups to formulate their proposals and negotiate their projects with their commissioning agencies.  The inception report presentations in week 11 also provide verbal formative feedback from peers and coaches.

There is no specific reading for this course as this will reflect the specific project Terms of Reference that students work to.

Presentation (10%) in Winter Term Week 11

Oral examination (20%)

Project (70%, 8000 words) in Winter Term Week 10

Oral exam (20%, 1 hour) in WT.

Project (70%, 8000 words) in WT10 (out of which 5% is the 360-peer review).

Group presentation (10%) in WT11.

Final client presentations are at the end of the Winter Term and are scheduled by the students in consultation with academic staff and the client. Students should be aware that presentations to clients may have to take place in the week after the end of WT, and students should plan accordingly and be available to participate if required.