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This landscape review on measuring and monitoring adaptive learning highlights the learning from five adaptive programming guidelines and toolkits and one implementation science framework to inform the monitoring and evaluation of adaptive learning. The introduction of adaptive learning processes and skillsets in global health programming is part of an emerging strategy to advance a learning culture within projects and teams to improve health program performance. The monitoring and...

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 short paper draws out lessons for working effectively with and through partners, based on the experience of the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) programme – an adaptive, politically smart governance programme in Tanzania. • Cultivating effective partnerships can be a key part of delivering locally legitimate projects that have the potential to create sustainable change. Adaptive and politically informed ways of working create specific opportunities and challenges for...

Demonstrating results has been a concern in international development cooperation ever since it was started and in recent years there has been an increased focus on achieving and reporting on “results”. Despite the fact that everyone involved in development cooperation wants to make a difference there has been a growing criticism from practitioners about the “results agenda” based on a concern that the approaches used are not fit for purpose. In the EBA-report, Cathy Shutt, at the...

The LEARN contract and the United States Agency for International Development/Bureau of Policy, Planning, and Learning (USAID/PPL) are managing an area of work known as the Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer the following key learning questions: ● Does an intentional, systematic, and resourced approach to collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) contribute to organizational effectiveness and/or development outcomes? ●...

This paper looks at how adaptive development is being applied by gender programmes and argues that gender and adaptive development communities have much to offer each other.

• This paper looks critically at the approach to value for money (VfM) in the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) programme – an adaptive, politically smart governance programme in Tanzania. • Adaptive, politically smart programmes like I4ID aim to deliver VfM by learning about what will work in complex environments, and quickly incorporating those lessons into delivery. When functioning properly, they can rapidly wind down activities as new information emerges and divert funding...

Adaptive programmes recognise that certain changes, particularly in behaviours, are complex, non-linear and difficult to measure. This briefing note explores the use of outcome mapping (OM) as a monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) approach to track behavioural change and inform adaptation for two programmes: the Pathways to Resilience in Semi-arid Economies (PRISE) research consortium and the Accountability in Tanzania programme (AcT I and AcT II). It discusses the implementation of...

Although collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) are not new to USAID and its implementing partners, they often do not happen regularly or systematically and are not intentionally resourced. The CLA Framework above identifies components and subcomponents to help you think more deliberately about what approach to CLA might be best tailored to your organizational or project context. The framework recognizes the diversity of what CLA can look like in various organizations and projects while...

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...

Nearly all challenges in international development tend to be complex because they depend on constantly evolving human behaviour, systems, and contexts, involving multiple actors, entities, and processes. As a result, both the discovery and scaling of innovations to address challenges in development often involve changes in system behaviour or even system-level transformation. This is rarely a linear process over time and can result in unexpected outcomes. Existing evaluation techniques...

This Discussion Note complements ADS 201 and outlines general principles and promising approaches for monitoring complex aspects of USAID development assistance. Complexity-aware monitoring is a type of complementary monitoring that is useful when results are difficult to predict due to dynamic contexts or unclear cause and-effect relationships. Key principles of the Program Cycle include applying analytic rigor, managing adaptively, and utilizing a range of approaches to achieve results....

Development cooperation has spent decades wrangling over the merits, evidence, and implications of what we may term “the learning hypothesis”: the idea that increased knowledge by development organisations must logically lead to increased effectiveness in the performance of their development activities. Organisations of all stripes have built research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) departments, adopted a multitude of knowledge management systems and tools, and tinkered with...

Integrating Food Security and Wild Caught Fisheries Management in USAID Programming is an illustrative case example that demonstrates how two adaptive management programming tools—situation models and results chains—can help USAID staff and its partners to better design and implement activities that integrate food security, nutrition, and sustainable management of wild fisheries.

Those working to advance social change in the Pacific must understand, work with and respond to the complex and changing relationships and dynamics of power that exist within such networks, and situate their work in the context of decolonisation and self-determination. But the approaches typically used by NGOs to plan our projects and programs have failed to give due attention to these dynamics. The result is that our projects fall short of achieving their promise, despite being technically...

Feedback is information about what happens as a result of what you do. Using that information to adapt what you do or how you do it creates what is called a feedback loop. A digital feedback loop uses digital technology at some stage of the feedback loop. Digital feedback loops help USAID missions improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their activities and can support partner countries on their journey to self-reliance through increased information sharing and improved government and...