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How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

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...

Florencia Guerzovich and Alix Wadeson

Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to organisational change which focuses on strengths rather than on weaknesses - quite different to many approaches to evaluation which focus on deficits and problems. "Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most...

This article, written by Emotional Intelligence Coach Andy Smith, describes the anticipatory principle which is one of the underpinnings of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). It argues that it is easier and more effective to move towards a positive imagined future than away from a negative one. It is principle number 4 in a series of principles outlined. More principle are listed below.

ODI’s Tiina Pasanen argues that more data doesn’t necessarily mean we make better decisions, and sets out some ideas for how we count what counts.

A case study focuses on a particular unit - a person, a site, a project. It often uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Case studies can be particularly useful for understanding how different elements fit together and how different elements (implementation, context and other factors) have produced the observed impacts. There are different types of case studies, which can be used for different purposes in evaluation. The GAO (Government Accountability Office) has...

Causal Link Monitoring (CLM) integrates design and monitoring to support adaptive management of projects. CLM helps project planners and managers identify the processes that are required to achieve desired results, and then to observe whether those processes take place, and how. Result-producing processes specify the causal links between results in a logic model or results framework—in other words, the processes between results. CLM focuses on how specific individuals or organizations use...

The causal loop diagram is an analytical tool that is seldom used in Six Sigma but nonetheless is still very valuable. It is a foundational tool used in system dynamics, a method of analysis used to develop an understanding of complex systems.

You may, or may not, be surprised to hear that many theories of change lack what we might generally understand as a theory.

Collaborative Outcomes Reporting (COR) is a participatory approach to impact evaluation based around a performance story that presents evidence of how a program has contributed to outcomes and impacts, that is then reviewed by both technical experts and program stakeholders, which may include community members. Collaborative Outcomes Reporting (COR) is a participatory approach to impact evaluation based around a performance story that presents evidence of how a program has contributed to...

Contribution Analysis is an approach for assessing causal questions and inferring causality in real-life program evaluations. It offers a step-by-step approach designed to help managers, researchers, and policymakers arrive at conclusions about the contribution their program has made (or is currently making) to particular outcomes. The essential value of contribution analysis is that it offers an approach designed to reduce uncertainty about the contribution the intervention is making to the...

Critical System Heuristics (CSH) provides a framework of questions about a program including what is (and what ought to be) its purpose and its source of legitimacy and who are (and who ought to be) its intended beneficiaries. CSH, as developed by Werner Ulrich and later elaborated upon in collaboration with Martin Reynolds, is an approach used to surface, elaborate, and critically consider boundary judgments, that is, the ways in which people/groups decide what is relevant to the system of...

Do we really need debiasing, yet another word?  Yes, unless anyone can improve on it, because we need a word to describe a rigorous discipline we development professionals need for grounded realism. This has been coming on me slowly. But now explorations and ‘aha!’ moments in India have accumulated and combined into an epiphany.  For […]

Democratic Evaluation is an approach where the aim of the evaluation is to serve the whole community. This allows people to be informed of what others are doing and sees the evaluator as someone who brokers the process. It generally focuses on inclusive practices which foster participation and collaboration. However it is also used as a means of ensuring public accountability and transparency.

Developmental Evaluation (DE) is an evaluation approach that can assist social innovators develop social change initiatives in complex or uncertain environments. DE originators liken their approach to the role of research & development in the private sector product development process because it facilitates real-time, or close to real-time, feedback to program staff thus facilitating a continuous development loop. Michael Quinn Patton is careful to describe this approach as one choice that...

This webpage from Tamarack Community provides links to audio files of an interview between Mark Cabaj and Michael Patton in which they discuss the topic of development evaluation. This is an "approach that has proven particularly useful and effective at addressing the unique challenges of evaluating the real nature of community change work. Learning Objectives: To deepen appreciation for the role of evaluation and evaluation thinking To explore the distinctions between various types of...

Generic, analytic, holistic, orbic, asterisc, escalieric, cephalopodic

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...