Does the whole add more than the SUM of its parts?

Resource type
Author/contributor
Title
Does the whole add more than the SUM of its parts?
Abstract
This is a series about Monitoring, Evaluating and Learning (MEL) whether sets of interventions/portfolios are adding more together than each one would produce on their own. In post 1, I pointed to coherence, the new OECD-DAC evaluation criteria as a way to bridge the ambition of bringing bigger change with the MEL world. In post 2, I shared 3 of 4 practical lessons I’ve learned in experimenting with MEL systems and exercises that focus explicitly on interactions of interventions/portfolios. In the third post, I bring Paul Pierson’s groundbreaking argument for social science to MEL. Paraphrasing, most contemporary MEL takes a “snapshot” view of interventions and portfolios, distorting their effects and meaning by ripping them from their temporal context. Instead, we should place in time interventions/portfolios with the ambition to add more than the sum of the part by constructing MEL systems looking at “moving pictures” rather than taking snapshots.
Blog Title
Medium
Date
25/07/2023, 13:20
Accessed
10/08/2023, 09:00
Language
en
Citation
Guerzovich, F. (2023, July 25). Does the whole add more than the SUM of its parts? Medium. https://medium.com/@florcig/does-the-whole-add-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-8b9eb352bb67