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What can middle-level theory do? Middle-level theory (MLT) has several uses in development planning and evaluation. „ It helps predict whether a programme can be expected to work in a new setting. „ It offers insights into what design features are needed for success. „ It provides invaluable information for monitoring to see if the programme is on track and to fix problems that arise. „ It reveals the causal processes and related assumptions to be tested in an evaluation and helps identify...

This working paper compares six of the most prominent adaptive approaches to emerge over the past two decades. Three come from the world of innovation, largely in the private sector (agile, lean startup and human-centred design), and three from the global development sector (thinking and working politically, forms of adaptive management and problem-driven iterative adaptation). While all of these approaches are valuable when used in the right context, practitioners may be perplexed by the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shifted the context in which aid and development is being delivered. The global scale of the pandemic and the speed at which it is spreading mean that the ‘normal’ economic, ideological and organisational influences which shape (if not determine) aid delivery are in flux. This means that – for a relatively short-period – there is scope for aid actors to work collectively to embed more locally-led, politically-informed and adaptive forms of MERL in aid...

Practical advice for donors and institutions responding to COVID-19

This briefing note looks at how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Wildlife Asia programme has operationalised the concepts of adaptive rigour and adaptive management as part of its approach to collaborating, learning and adapting. As described by the Global Learning for Adaptive Management (GLAM) initiative, adaptive rigour is about ensuring that the data, information, methods, processes and systems that underpin adaptive management are robust, systematic and...

Within DFID, there is now a commitment to more flexible and adaptive programming. This recognises that: • DFID works in contexts that continuously evolve and change, sometimes in unpredictable ways. To respond to this, the agency needs to remain flexible – to expect change and have a good understanding of context, with resources that can be adjusted and scope to change direction if needed. All DFID programmes should be able to do this. • Some DFID programmes aim to support change in...

Adaptive programmes can be accountable, rigorous and high quality in how they use evidence by taking an ’adaptive rigour’ approach. Core development and humanitarian challenges are complex, and require processes of testing, learning and iteration to find solutions – adaptive management offers one approach for this. Yet large bureaucracies and development organisations can have low tolerance for experimentation and learning, and adaptive management can be viewed as an excuse for ‘making...

The United Kingdom’s (UK) Department for International Development (DFID) is an ambitious government department that is committed to reducing poverty and conflict overseas. Many of the issues on which DFID works are complex; whether focused on climate change, gender equality, health or other priorities, simple solutions rarely exist. And to tackle these complex challenges, DFID staff must interact with unpredictable systems of political, organisational and individual behaviours and...

This training package includes 7 Training Modules and a set of Annexes (Annexes A-O). The Training Modules build on each other and should ideally be used in a sequenced way in a training setting. However, for groups with specific training needs around particular areas, modules can also be used individually, but need to be tailored by the trainers and facilitators to meet the needs of specific audiences. The annexes provide worksheets and hand-outs that can be used as resources during the training for specific modules and exercises.

Polycentricity is a fundamental concept in commons scholarship that connotes a complex form of governance with multiple centers of semiautonomous decision making. If the decision-making centers take each other into account in competitive and cooperative relationships and have recourse to conflict resolution mechanisms, they may be regarded as a polycentric governance system. In the context of natural resource governance, commons scholars have ascribed a number of advantages to polycentric...

Case study about the MUVA programme in Mozambique. (Maybe it "misses the point of AP which is not learning for learning. Is learning for impact. The word impact doesn’t even come up once!") Adaptive Management programming within the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office demonstrates that the UK Government has examples of optimising for learning within its existing management practice. However, currently, the adaptive management practices are unhelpfully framed by an approach which...

Internal DFID document from the DevAdapt Programme. Based on another previous document (also internal).

This paper examines adaptive approaches in aid programming in a fragile, conflict and violence-affected setting (FCVAS), namely Myanmar. A combination of desk review and field research has been used to examine some of the assertions around the ‘adaptive management’ approach, which has arisen in recent years as a response to critiques of overly rigid, pre-designed, blue-print and linear project plans. This paper explores if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning...

CONTEXT-DRIVEN ADAPTATION COLLECTION

This Discussion Note complements ADS 201.3.1.2 Program Cycle Principles by elaborating on Principle 2: Manage Adaptively through Continuous Learning. This Discussion Note is intended for USAID staff interested in learning about recent and promising practices in adaptive management across the Program Cycle.

This Discussion Note complements ADS 201.3.1.2 Program Cycle Principles by elaborating on Principle 2: Manage Adaptively through Continuous Learning. This Discussion Note is intended for USAID staff interested in learning about recent and promising practices in adaptive management across the Program Cycle.

The field of global development has reached a critical turning point. Almost gone is the mechanical, one-size-fits-all “good governance” paradigm of the past. In its place is a growing embrace of complexity and systems thinking. While this is an encouraging shift in the right direction, the discussion mostly ends by concluding that we should adapt. Yuen Yuen Ang urges that it’s time to take our conversation on “complexity & development” to the next level: how to enable adaptation. Effective...

ICAI published this review on DFID’s approach to value for money in February 2018, and as value for money is both a process and an outcome and cuts across all aspects of DFID’s operations, did not score this review. We made five recommendations and published a follow-up to this review in July 2019. All UK government departments are required to achieve value for money in their use of public funds. In recent years, DFID has been working to build value for money considerations further into its...