Assessment of the factors affecting projects’ performance in telecom companies: a case of selected Telecom Companies in Tanzania.

The main objective of this study was to assess factors affecting performance of telecommunication projects. For the study to be more clearly, it was guided by three specific objectives which were to examine the performance level of telecom projects, to establish factors affecting the success of telecom projects and to develop the strategies for ensuring success of telecom projects. The study was conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and included five telecom companies that are TIGO, VODACOM, TTCL, AIRTEL and HUAWEI. Respondents were drawn from technical and management department of these five companies. Non-probability techniques were used to sample respondents. The results found that visited telecom companies had performed better on meeting expected qualities of their projects, control cost overrun and time overrun. Generally, the results show that performance level of the telecom projects among selected telecom companies was high. Concern factors affect performance of projects; it was noted that fund, clearly defined roles and responsibilities, project size and number of the project undertaken per year were factor significantly predict performance of the projects. The strategies mentioned to improve success of the project were regular meetings and share information within and across the companies, conduction of regular project monitoring, use of proper technological tools to monitor cost and scheduling the progress of the project, consulting project management experts before beginning the project as well as adhering to the policy and legislation pertain to technology. However, the study called for the maintenance of good/proper accountability with high level of fairness and transparency from the time of preparation to the implementation of the project so as to attain planned budgets.