The International Development Innovation Alliance - IDIA (R4D, 2017)
Brochure from the International Development Innovation Alliance

Evaluation at IDRC - IDRC (IDRC, 2017)

A ‘real-time’ and anthropological response to the Ebola crisis - IDS (IDS, 2017)
Impact Summary The Ebola epidemic that began in the Guinea-Sierra Leone-Liberia border region in December 2013 spread fast through the villages, cities and trade routes of this highly-peopled,...

An Upside Down View of Governance - IDS (Centre for the Future State, IDS, 2010)
Informal institutions and personalised relationships are usually seen as governance problems. However the research presented in this synthesis paper suggests that they can also be part of the solution...

Towards excellence: Policy and action research for sustainable development - iied (The International Institute for Environment and Development, 2012)

The road to results: designing and conducting effective development evaluations - Imas, Morra; G, Linda; Rist, Ray C. (The World Bank, 2009)
The analytical, conceptual, and political framework of development is changing dramatically. The new development agenda calls for broader understandings of sectors, countries, development strategies, and policies. It emphasizes learning and continuous feedback at all phases of the development cycle. As the development agenda grows in scope and complexity, development evaluation follows suit. Development evaluator are moving away from traditional implementation and output-focused evaluation models toward results-based evaluation models, as the development community calls for results and embraces the millennium development goals. As the development community shifts its focus away from projects in order to comprehensively address country challenges, development evaluators are seeking methods with which to assess results at the country, sector, theme, policy, and even global levels. As the development community recognizes the importance of not only a comprehensive but also a coordinated approach to developing country challenges and emphasizes partnerships, development evaluators are increasingly engaged in joint evaluations. These joint evaluations, while advantageous in many respects, add to the complexity of development evaluation (OECD 2006). Additionally, development evaluators increasingly face the measurement challenge of determining the performance of an individual development organization in this broader context and of identifying its contribution. This text is intended as a tool for use in building development evaluation capacity. It aims to help development evaluators think about and explore the new evaluation architecture and especially to design and conduct evaluations that focus on results in meeting the challenges of development.

QUIP: Understanding clients through in-depth interviews - IMP-ACT (Institute of Development Studies, 2004)
This Practice Note by Imp-Act gives a step-by-step guide to developing and conducting in-depth interviews using the QUIP approach, and analysing the information and making conclusions based on what you have learned.

From a last mile century to a first mile revolution: the future is OSLO - Indy Johar (Medium, 2013)
The Future is OSLO

Locally driven development: Overcoming the obstacles - Ingram, George (Brookings Institution, 2022)
Locally led development is a complex process that the development community, in the U.S. and around the world, has spent several decades trying to get right. Yet, despite all the experience and lessons learned, it feels like we are barely beyond the starting line. This publication aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on locally led development, especially as to how the United States can address the obstacles posed by U.S. law, regulation, policy, and practice. It consists of two parts: • An essay by George Ingram that notes the path that has taken us to this point, identifies key obstacles, and invites a discussion of how to overcome impediments and move forward. • A set of 15 commentaries written by development experts that add a range of perspectives and nuances to the discussion

Rethinking monitoring and evaluation in complex systems — when learning is a result in itself - Innovation, UNDP (Medium, 2022)
By Søren Vester Haldrup, UNDP’s Strategic Innovation Unit

Introduction to International Futures - International Futures at the Pardee Center (International Futures Help System, 2016)
INTERNATIONAL FUTURES HELP SYSTEM Introduction to IFs Purposes Visual Representation of IFs Issues and Modules Quick Survey of IFs Issues and Modules IFs Background IFs Geographic Representation of the World IFs Time Horizon Instructional Use Acknowledgements Feedback Support for IFs Use Development Mode Features

The Boda Boda Talk Talk Module - Internews (Internews & USAID, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

M&E Universe - intrac (INTRAC, 2019)
The M&E Universe is a free, online resource developed by INTRAC to support development practitioners involved in monitoring and evaluation (M&E). It consists of a series of short papers (2-6 pages) on different subjects related to M&E. It can be explored through an online platform (intrac.org/universe) that is compatible with most web browsers. The M&E Universe is designed for M&E practitioners with different levels of experience and expertise in M&E, from those new to M&E who want an entry level into the subject to experienced practitioners wanting to broaden their knowledge. Initial contact with the Map will provide people with a starting point for understanding different aspects of M&E and how they link to each other. More experienced practitioners can browse the Map to identify more advanced subjects of interest, such as sampling methods, different forms of evaluation, organisational M&E systems and complex methodologies for data collection and analysis.

The M&E (Monitoring & Evaluation) Universe - INTRAC (INTRAC, 2019)
The M&E Universe is a free, online resource developed by INTRAC to support development practitioners involved in monitoring and evaluation (M&E). It consists of a series of short papers (2-6 pages) on different subjects related to M&E. To begin exploring the Universe right away, use the button below. To find out more, read on.

ADAPT: Analysis Driven Agile Programming Techniques - IRC (International Rescue Committee (IRC), 2016)
A growing body of research indicates that aid agencies are most successful when able to operate flexibly, particularly in fragile environments. Yet our systems and tools are often too rigid to effectively address complex problems, and program incentives frequently undermine adaptation instead of supporting it. To drive improvements in impact we need to be better able to analyse the dynamics of a given situation, anticipate how these might evolve, and be sufficiently agile to adapt to changes in context and need.

Social network analysis handbook: connecting the dots in humanitarian programs - IRC (International Rescue Committee, 2016)
The following handbook is designed to provide a step by step guide to the application of Social Network Analysis for the IRC.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Stakeholder and Social Network Analysis - Guidance Note - IRC (International Rescue Committee, 2019)
Stakeholder Analysis is used to identify the actors and relationships that influence project outcomes. This guidance, from IRC, can help you determine how to work and who to partner, coordinate or engage with in order to best achieve the outcome. It builds on existing stakeholder information and typically will include a participatory internal meeting or workshop.

How should donors manage adaptively? Market Systems Development as a case study. - Itad (Itad, 2018)
Itad has recently completed a strategic evaluation for Sida to help them work through how they can best manage programmes that are adaptive and apply systems approaches - the conclusions from the evaluation about what funders need to do to manage adaptively are of broader relevance.

Redesigning Field Papers’ User Interface - Jacks, Lindsey (Cadasta, 2016)
For the past three months, I've been working with Cadasta and Stamen on the atlas creation pages of the Field Papers map annotation tool. The end result is now live on the Field Papers website. We took the four step “wizard” process for creating an atlas, combined it all into a single-page, and...
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Facilitating collaborative problem solving with human-centred design: the Making All Voices Count governance programme in 12 countries of Africa and Asia - Jackson, Carl (Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Three Approaches to Monitoring: Feedback Systems, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation and Logical Frameworks - Jacobs, Alex; Barnett, Chris; Ponsford, Richard (IDS Bulletin, 2010)
This article compares key attributes, strengths and weaknesses of three different approaches to monitoring development interventions: the logical framework approach, participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) and feedback systems. Academic and practitioner literature describes how logframes meet the needs of senior decision-makers to summarise, organise and compare projects. PM&E meets the needs of field staff to work sensitively with intended beneficiaries and support their learning and empowerment. Feedback systems appear to link the two, providing performance data for managers and creating incentives for implementing staff to focus on their intended beneficiaries. Feedback systems build on the rich heritage of PM&E and are compatible with logframes. They may help provide a manageable and effective approach to accountability that links the means and the ends of development interventions. Feedback systems are at an early stage of development. There is a lot to learn about how and where they work best.

An Adaptive Capacity Guide Book: assessing, building and evaluating the capacity of communities to adapt in a changing climate - Jacobs, B.; Nelson, R.; Kuruppu, N.; Leith, P. (University of Technology and University of Tasmania, 2015)
A capacity to adapt to change is essential for managing Australia’s natural resources. The individuals, communities and organisations who manage our natural resources all have an innate capacity to adapt to change. Changes in climate, markets and technology have shaped the way we adapt the management of natural resources in urban, rural and coastal landscapes. Some of these changes are predictable and easy to manage. Others are expected, but their timing and magnitude are uncertain. Whatever the future holds, this guide can be used to build our capacity to meet future change with confidence.

Advancing Work with the Grain at USAID - Jacobstein, David (USAID Learning Lab, 2018)
In December 2017, I wrote a blog about some of the insights gained during a workshop on Context-Driven Adaptation, where many of our sharpest field officers shared the ways that they assessed and adapted to shifts in context to keep programming relevant and effective.

Context-Driven Adaptation (Overview) - Jacobstein, David (USAID Learning Lab, 2018)
CONTEXT-DRIVEN ADAPTATION COLLECTION

DRG Center practical tips to implement more context-adaptive programming - Jacobstein, David (#AdaptDev, 2018)
Hi #adaptdevers, The cross-sectoral programs team in the DRG Center have been working in support of ways that programming can be made more aware of, and responsive to, context considerations that have to do with incentives and relationships between different actors - often called power dynamics or political economy. Following several discussions with field folks, we were asked to come up with simple and practical tips that could help staff to implement more context-adaptive programming, or to better Work Politically to use TWP jargon. With assistance from many of our field staff and partners, we've put together three documents (to start) that have now been cleared to share publicly: • Tips on Making Your Solicitations Invite Context-Driven Adaptive Programming - suggestions spanning most sections of a typical solicitation to better weave in Thinking and Working Politically. I'm particularly excited that this document contains embedded links to excerpts from a set of solicitations that model good practice. You can also find a summary of all the excerpts from real solicitations, and links onward to the public posting of those solicitations on Fed Biz Ops or Grants.gov, here. • Tips on Power Dynamics and Theories of Change - suggestions relevant to those working on project designs and logic models. • Tips for Better Use of Advisory Councils - suggestions to set up better advisory bodies that help you to incorporate political economy more automatically into your programmatic adjustments. I hope that you'll find these practical and helpful! Feedback is always welcome. Best, David

Tips for Finding Unusual Allies and Building Innovative Alliances - Jacobstein, David (USAID Learning Lab, 2018)
One of the truisms of thinking and working politically (TWP) is that it requires looking differently at how stakeholders relate to a given development challenge or process, and building coalitions of the “right actors at the right time” who can drive forward progress while working with the grain of the context. While it’s easy to call for coalitions for change and diverse stakeholder engagement, identifying allies beyond those already seized with an issue, and finding ways to collaborate with stakeholders who may have different reasons for joining a coalition, is a challenging task. These are some suggested tips to improve working in that fashion.

Evaluating programming that thinks and works politically: Challenges and emerging practice - Jacobstein, David; Swift, Sarah (New Directions for Evaluation, 2022)
Issues of power are not new to program evaluation. What is new is a consideration of how programming uses insights into incentives that shape and adapt implementation. How should one evaluate in a way that explicitly assesses the ways in which a program considers power? One of the innovative topics deriving from the democracy and governance space is the approach of thinking and working politically (TWP) which is seeing increased use in development programming. TWP suggests different mental models and practical approaches to achieving development objectives in ways that are more contextually grounded and informed by power dynamics. This article describes several of the core challenges to evaluation of TWP and also a rubric of considerations for more effective evaluation practices in this emerging field.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ev.20527

Managing Humanitarian Innovation: The cutting edge of aid - James, Eric; Taylor, Abigail (Practical Action Publishing, 2018)
The challenges facing humanitarian logistics are huge. Refugee camps present enormously challenging environments in which sudden spikes in demand, difficult to access locations, disruptions due to conflict or disasters, as well as normal supply chain problems are commonplace. This means that orders for medical and other supplies can take weeks and sometimes months to fulfil, severely impeding humanitarian operations. There is also a lack of or slow adoption of technology routinely used elsewhere. In addition, humanitarian logistics are also expensive. When customs clearance, transportation, storage, middlemen and administration are added in, the costs of basic items are often exorbitant. Managing Humanitarian Innovation presents a new approach that is beginning to transform the way humanitarian logistics are conducted. Innovation in logistics includes disrupting and improving supply chains through the use of technology, especially 3D printers, and engaging people to manage this approach. The book discusses what innovation is, and strategies for supporting it; it describes practical innovations and how they have been applied; and it outlines how innovation labs can be run. Finally it covers how to fund innovation and it suggests how humanitarian innovation might develop in the future. This book brings together the real experience of practitioners who have made innovation work. It is a collaborative work written by and for the community of people involved in humanitarian innovation, in particular in the making and manufacturing of humanitarian supplies. The book is full of practical and actionable points of value to the humanitarian community. Managing Humanitarian Innovation is essential reading for humanitarian practitioners as well as volunteers and others involved in humanitarian supplies provision. It is equally helpful to thought leaders, policy makers and educators.

Understanding Strategic Capacity in Constituency-Based Organizations - Jane Booth-Tobin; Kal Munis; Lynsy Smithson-Stanley; Hahrie Han (The P3 Lab, Johns Hopkins University, 2021)
Movement organizations work in inherently uncertain political environments. Whether an organization is advocating for a new minimum wage, working to close a private prison, or seeking to influence an election, the terrain they are operating on shifts nearly every day. That is increasingly true as political uncertainty rises in the 21st century, particularly for historically race-class subjugated communities. Any movement-based organization seeking to build, exercise, and win political power must have sophisticated strategic capacities to be able to navigate these uncertain, dynamic, and constantly shifting political environments. Yet, our knowledge of how movements can nurture the kind of strategic capacities that allows them to build constituencies and leadership that can operate in the flexible ways needed for these dynamic circumstances is limited. This report seeks to synthesize what is currently known about organizations that successfully build and wield strategic capacity, with a particular eye toward how it might apply to constituency-based organizations. The report concludes with an assessment and facilitated conversation guide to support movements and movement organizations in understanding how developed (or not) their strategic capacities are.

Why are effective feedback mechanisms in cash transfers so important? - Jannat, Mahiratul (CLARISSA, 2023)
The CLARISSA Social Protection Intervention was set us as an innovative social policy intervention for tackling social ills, with a...

Failing Forward: How CARE is focusing on what goes wrong to improve impact - Janoch, Emily (USAID LEARN, 2019)
CARE's Failing Forward initiative is sparking opportunities to showcase the ideas that don't work so we can spend more time implementing the ones that do. It's changing the conversation inside the organization, and leading to changes in the way we design and implement programs. It's also allowing us to make connections across a global portfolio of more than 900 projects, and with new and different partners to learn from their experience.

Failing Forward: How CARE is Focusing on What Goes Wrong to Improve Impact - Janoch, Emily (CARE, 2019)
CARE's Failing Forward initiative is sparking opportunities to showcase the ideas that don't work so we can spend more time implementing the ones that do. It's changing the conversation inside the organization, and leading to changes in the way we design and implement programs.

Examining the results and adaptation ideas in foreign aid - Janus, Heiner (University of Manchester, 2020)
This thesis applies ideational and institutional theories to analyse how two specific ideas, results and adaptation, have changed the theory and practice of development cooperation. The thesis addresses the question of why the results and adaptation ideas are often treated as binaries and how this debate has evolved historically. In a first theoretical paper, the evolution of results and adaptation is conceptualised as a combination of institutional layering and diffusion within development organisations. The second theoretical paper applies ideational theory, in particular, the coalition magnet framework, to China as a donor country. The empirical papers apply ideational and institutional theories to study aid projects funded by the World Bank and China in the Rwandan agriculture sector. The third paper analyses through which mechanism, results-based principal-agent relationships or problem-driven iterative adaptation, the World Bankâs Program for Results in the agriculture sector in Rwanda has led to increased agricultural productivity. The paper combines causal process tracing and contribution analysis to investigate two underlying theories of change of the Program for Results. The fourth paper applies the same framework and methodology to the Chinese Agricultural Technology Demonstration Center in Rwanda. The fifth paper compares both projects, the World Bank project and the Chinese project. The thesis finds that the ideas of results and adaptation are often presented as mutually exclusive mainly at the general level of public philosophies or paradigms, but show overlap and potential for integration on the level of framing policy problems and policy solutions. The thesis also demonstrates that there is unexplored potential for convergence between China and Development Assistance Committee donors around âcoalition magnetâ ideas. The empirical part of the thesis reveals how results-based and adaptive causal mechanisms co-exist within given aid interventions by the World Bank and China, how these interact and how they ultimately contribute to achieving development outcomes. The key finding is that the broader political context of the Rwandan agricultural sector is the main factor for determining development outcomes, which neither the World Bank project nor the Chinese projects take into account. The comparison of the World Bankâs and Chinaâs interventions finds that donor organisations need to address how results-based ideas in combination adaptive development ideas can be better tailored to fit into the specific context of the Rwandan agriculture sector.

Social Design and Neocolonialism - Janzer, Cinnamon L.; Weinstein, Lauren S. (Design and Culture, 2014)
This article examines the current field of social design: its claims, practices, and methodologies. Findings discovered through qualitative research illuminate the current application of social design practices and offer critique around their use in the social sphere. This article argues that designers must be sensitive to a variety of complex social and cultural cues and structures or they risk contributing to, or practicing, design neocolonialism. The article offers two key theoretical suggestions to further the emerging field's progress. First, social design must shift its focus from one that is human-centered to one that is situation-centered. Second, it is imperative that social design develops a shared framework for understanding, executing, and evaluating its initiatives and interventions. Additionally, this article introduces a matrix to serve as an early iteration of a shared framework.
Keywords: Design Methodology; Design Thinking; Framework; Human-centered design; IMPORTANT; social design

Co-Creating Digital Public Services - Jarke, Juliane (Co-creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society: Evidence for User-centric Design, 2021)
This chapter reviews key literature and concepts relating to the co-creation of digital public services. For this task, it is firstly important to consider what kind of digital public services may be suitable for co-creation. In order to do so, the first section of this chapter defines what a digital public service is (e.g. with respect to different types of service providers, different types of services and service delivery) and considers what kind of digital public services allow for meaningful citizen participation. To better conceptualise different degrees of participation, the subsequent section reviews Arnstein’s (1969) “ladder of citizen participation” and related work. This allows distinguishing between different degrees of non-participation, (consultative) participation and beyond. Thirdly, the chapter reviews traditional participatory approaches that provide the basis to co-creating of digital public services: (1) co-production of public services, (2) co-design and (3) civic open data use. The chapter summarises and compares the different rationales for participation in these approaches, and reviews how they understand the sharing of control, the sharing of knowledge and the enabling of change.
Keywords: Civic Tech; Co-creation; Co-design; Co-production; Digital public services; Open data; Open government; Participation; Participatory design; User-centric services; e-services

Co-creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society: Evidence for User-centric Design - Jarke, Juliane (Springer International Publishing, 2021)
This open access book attends to the co-creation of digital public services for ageing societies. Increasingly public services are provided in digital form; their uptake however remains well below expectations. In particular, amongst older adults the need for public services is high, while at the same time the uptake of digital services is lower than the population average. One of the reasons is that many digital public services (or e-services) do not respond well to the life worlds, use contexts and use practices of its target audiences. This book argues that when older adults are involved in the process of identifying, conceptualising, and designing digital public services, these services become more relevant and meaningful.The book describes and compares three co-creation projects that were conducted in two European cities, Bremen and Zaragoza, as part of a larger EU-funded innovation project. The first part of the book traces the origins of co-creation to three distinct domains, in which co-creation has become an equally important approach with different understandings of what it is and entails: (1) the co-production of public services, (2) the co-design of information systems and (3) the civic use of open data. The second part of the book analyses how decisions about a co-creation project’s governance structure, its scope of action, its choice of methods, its alignment with strategic policies and its embedding in existing public information infrastructures impact on the process and its results. The final part of the book identifies key challenges to co-creation and provides a more general assessment of what co-creation may achieve, where the most promising areas of application may be and where it probably does not match with the contingent requirements of digital public services. Contributing to current discourses on digital citizenship in ageing societies and user-centric design, this book is useful for researchers and practitioners interested in co-creation, public sector innovation, open government, ageing and digital technologies, citizen engagement and civic participation in socio-technical innovation.

We Rise - Movement Building Reimagined - JASS (Just Associates, 2017)
In our virtual toolkit, We Rise: Movement Building Reimagined, we describe in detail four interconnected cycles of movement building – Rising Up, Building Up, Standing Up, and Shaking Up. At the heart of these cycles lies an analysis of how to challenge and transform power. Each cycle features key ideas, relevant tools, and practical tips from our work and activists in our network that movement builders around the world can learn from and adapt in their own work.

The Future is a Choice: The Oxfam Framework and Guidance for Resilient Development - Jeans, Helen; Thomas, Sebastien; Castillo, Gina (Policy & Practice, 2016)
This guide provides a framework for Oxfam staff to design programmes and campaigns that contribute to resilient development. Oxfam defines resilience as ‘the ability of women and men to realize their rights and improve their well-being despite shocks, stresses

Adaptive Management - Jenal, Marcus; Cunningham, Shawn (Annual Reflection 2019, 2019)

Causality and attribution in market systems development - Jenal, Marcus; Liesner, Mollie (BEAM, 2017)
Resources that contain evidence of market systems interventions. Recently updated.

Human trafficking in South Asia: Assessing the effectiveness of interventions - Jensen, Charity; Oosterhoff, P.; Pocock, N. (FCDO, 2020)
This Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) examines current evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to combat human trafficking in four South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan). This REA is being carried out as part of a wider assignment for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with the overall objective of synthesising evidence on the effectiveness of interventions that tackle modern slavery in South Asia. Two REAs were conducted on different types of modern slavery, one on human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation, and another on child labour (Idris et al., 2020). The research question for this REA is: ‘What has been the effect of interventions to combat and/or reduce sexual and labour exploitation in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Nepal?’ Trafficking in persons is a form of ‘modern slavery’, which is an umbrella term for the variety of situations in which someone is forcibly controlled by an individual or group for the purpose of exploitation. The Global Slavery Index estimated that, on any given day in 2016, 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery, including 24.9 million people in forced labour and 15.4 million people in forced marriage. Of the estimated almost 25 million people in modern slavery in Asia, 66% were exploited for labour (Global Slavery Index, 2018).

Critical friends - real time insights for shaping strategy - Johnson, Debbie; Nathan, Geeta; Rahman, Syahirah Abdul (Chapters, 2022)
This chapter focuses on facilitation given by the Innovation Caucus to provide expert academic critique to inform Innovate UK's strategy for UK business innovation. As Innovate UK's strategy developed, it became evident that several policy domains needed critical insights and evidence. An academic critical friend provided the latest academic insights, evidence and wider perspective of the actors in the UK Innovation system, insights of which policy makers often lack. The chapter gave case studies of Innovation Caucus' work with Innovate UK in facilitating extensive research expertise and helping policy makers to open dialogue. It also describes 'The Innovators' Breakfast Club', a webinar series organised by Innovation Caucus, co-developed with Innovate UK, which created live face-to-face dialogue between academic experts and Innovate UK strategy/policy leads. This example showed how critical friends are important in facilitating the initial dialogues needed to build evidence for policy making. The dialogue builds the foundation for a virtuous cycle of learning. The approach provides an opportunity for academic experts to gain insights into the priorities and dilemmas facing policy makers, to shape future academic research and refine the skill set needed to become critical friends.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Integrating Local Knowledge in Development Programming - Johnson, Madelyn; Maunder, Ishan; Pinga, Andie (USAID, 2022)
The objective of this report, Integrating Local Knowledge in Development Programming is to share knowledge of how development donors and implementing organizations leverage local knowledge to inform programming. In a recent speech at Georgetown University, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power said, “As Americans with a fraught history living up to our own values, we’ve got to approach this work with intention and humility. But the entire development community needs to interrogate the traditional power dynamics of donor-driven development and look for ways to amplify the local voices of those who too often have been left out of the conversation.” To that end, USAID’s Agency Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning (KMOL) function facilitated conversations with multilateral and bilateral donors and local organizations to understand how organizations define, utilize, and incorporate local knowledge into their programmatic and operational activities. Using qualitative tools to gather data for this report, the research team explored five overarching themes: 1. Local Knowledge Nomenclature and Definitions 2. Best Practices 3. Outcomes 4. Ethics and Power Dynamics 5. Challenges

The Adaptive Management System for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area — Linking Management Planning with Effectiveness Evaluation - Jones, Glenys (Adaptive Environmental Management, 2009)
This paper provides a 30 year retrospective on the development of the adaptive management system for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (Australia). It describes the historical background, key influences and stages that paved the way to establishment of adaptive management. It outlines how effectiveness monitoring, evaluation and reporting are integrated with the management plan for the Area to establish an ongoing adaptive management cycle. The chapter presents figures and tools for adaptive management, including 5 useful questions for guiding the integration of effectiveness monitoring, evaluation and reporting into management plans and programs. Strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive management system are discussed. Key lessons and insights distilled from this experience are offered, including the importance of planned monitoring of management effectiveness; the role of stakeholder assessments; and the factors that can assist in sustaining longterm strategic programs despite ongoing institutional change. The chapter concludes with suggestions for fostering an enabling environment for adaptive management.
Keywords: Adaptive Management; Management Intent; Reserve Management; World Heritage

A guide to monitoring and evaluating policy influence - Jones, Harry (ODI, 2011)

Making Outcome Mapping Work - Evolving experiences from around the World - Jones, Harry (Outcome Mapping Learning Community, 2007)

Taking responsibility for complexity: how implementation can achieve results in the face of complex problems - Jones, Harry (ODI, 2011)
OCLC: 837825712

Doing Urban Development Differently - Jones, Harry; Adhikari, Bishnu (From Poverty to Power, 2017)
Guest post from Harry Jones and Bishnu Adhikari, both of Palladium on what urban aid and development can learn from the Doing Development Differently movement

Systemic Design Principles for Complex Social Systems - Jones, Peter H. (Social Systems and Design, 2014)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Don’t Build It: A Guide For Practitioners In Civic Tech / Tech For Development - Jordan, Luke (Grassroot and MIT Governance Lab, 2021)
If you just remember these... If you can avoid building it, don’t build it; if you have to build it, hire a CTO, ship early, and mature long; and no matter what, draw on a trusted crew, build lean and fast, and get close to and build with your users as soon as possible. — This guide aims to help you avoid bad projects, structure the team right, ship and learn quicker, and mature longer. The guide starts with project selection, including why the best project to select is no project at all. It moves on to team structure, and the extreme importance of a full-time senior tech lead (or chief technology officer (CTO), understood as an excellent engineering manager). It then covers timelines, emphasizing shipping early but having enormous patience getting to maturity, above all in finding product-use-fit, and avoiding vanity metrics. The guide then goes into some detail on hiring, covering the CTO role, senior contractors, designers and young engineers. The longest section, by some distance, is that on hiring. Hiring is the one thing considered critical in every piece of the lore, by founders and investors and managers alike, across all sectors. It is also the field in which I think I got it mostly right, and for reasons I can explain in ways that I believe will be helpful.

Doing Anti-corruption Differently - Jorge (www.globalintegrity.org, 2016)
By Alan Hudson, Executive Director Corruption and how to tackle it is center-stage in London this week, with the spotlight brighter than ever as a result of the Panama Papers. This is welcome news. The Anti-Corruption Summit, hosted by the...

Reading the Local Context: A Causal Chain Approach to Social Accountability - Joshi, Anuradha (IDS Bulletin, 2014)
There is a general consensus that ‘context’ matters for development outcomes, yet we have little understanding of how exactly ‘context’ affects outcomes. This article focuses on the question of ‘context’ in social accountability (SA) initiatives by separating macro- and micro-contextual factors. On the macro side (country level), accountability processes need to take into account broad factors such as national histories of citizen–state engagement. On the micro side, local factors can drive the extent to which SA initiatives are successful, even within otherwise broadly similar national contexts. The article outlines the basic components of accountability and proposes a ‘causal chain'strategy to better understand the micro-context. This would allow existing evidence to be reorganised to assess the promise of existing and new initiatives by deconstructing the various mini-causal pathways (i.e. in the micro-context) and understanding the contextual conditions that make them work.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Introduction - Localising Governance: An Outlook on Research and Policy - Joshi, Anuradha; Schultze-Kraft, Markus (IDS Bulletin, 2014)

Watering the Grassroots: A Strategy for Social Movement Support - Joyce, Mary (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)
In this third and final think piece exploring the role of grassroots organizations and movements for state accountability (find the previous pieces here and here), the author Mary Joyce, proposes new thinking about how funders and other external organizations can best support social movements. Funding and other support for popular organizations and movements is not straightforward, and there are potential risks and distortions involved. Interested supporters need to clearly identify and articulate these obstacles in their discussions with movement activists before pursuing and funding or other support activities. This think piece outlines several potential avenues of support: small, flexible grants; funding intermediary organizations; providing external consultants or researchers to work with movements; and other options as well. These suggestions provide ideas for funders and other organizations seeking to move beyond projects to supporting robust accountability ecosystems, in which grassroots organizations and movements play a critical role.

Mobilizing Accountability: A Learning Agenda for Grassroots Organizations and Social Movements Addressing State Accountability - Joyce, Mary; Halloran, Brendan (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)

A Movements Perspective on Transparency and Accountability - Joyce, Mary; Walker, Tom (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)
This Think Piece describes social movements pursuing government accountability and the challenges and opportunities to supporting them.

A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking - Jullien, Francois (University of Hawaii Press, 2004)
In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, Francois Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese stategies work in several domains (the battle-field, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien's brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West.

Design in the Organization: Parts and Wholes - Junginger, Sabine (Research Design Journal, 2009)
Inroduces the stages of adoption of Design in organizations, with a visual tool.

Don't Lead Alone: Think Like a System, Act Like a Network, Lead Like a Movement! - Justis, Cleveland; Student, Daniel (Fast Company Press, 2023)
Think. Act. Lead.It seems simple enough. But understanding your desired impact and how it fits into a larger picture, connecting your work to others and finding new collaborators, and bringing those collaborators together and moving them in a unified direction is never easy.Governments, businesses, and nonprofits all have unique approaches and ideas that many of us learn through our work. Yet, we rarely consider the skills needed to create and maintain the partnerships between them. Most of us learn those skills through trial, error, and often, failure. Worse, we typically stay in our self-reinforcing silos, sharing perspectives and frustrations with like-minded people, limiting our vision of what our work can become. By partnering with other sectors, we combine and adapt approaches to solve complex problems, and leaders in any industry can create large-scale change.Cleveland Justis and Daniel Student share a road map for effective partnerships that increase impact and profitability. Using real-life examples and practice exercises, the authors teach how to acquire and use skills to solve complex problems and propel your organization forward by combining a multitude of perspectives, split into three sections:Think Like a SystemAct Like a NetworkLead Like a MovementIt’s time to get out of our silos. Don’t lead alone.

Leading Effectively in a VUCA Environment: A is for Ambiguity - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2011)
This is the last in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Diversity and global reach introduce ambiguity to the environment; therefore opportunities and challenges must be appreciated from multiple aspects, not just our own […]
Keywords: Leadership; Leading teams

Leading Effectively in a VUCA Environment: C is for Complexity - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2010)
This is the third in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Our complex environment demands a perspective that goes beyond viewing threats and opportunities as collective; we must see them as interactive. Leading through […]
Keywords: Leadership; Leadership development

Leading in a VUCA Environment: U is for Uncertainty - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2010)
This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military. It’s the second in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The frenetic pace of our environment, brought on by volatility, […]
Keywords: Leadership

Leading in a VUCA Environment: V Is for Volatility - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2010)
This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military This is the first in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Do challenges and opportunities that once took days or […]
Keywords: Leadership

Linking Assessment to Instruction: Using Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills in an Outcomes-Driven Model - Kaminski, Ruth; Cummings, Kelli (Dynamic Measurement Group, 2008)
As educators increasingly are held responsible for student achievement, school personnel struggle to find ways to effectively document student responsiveness to interventions and track progress toward important outcomes. While many educators focus on high-stakes tests as a means of documenting student achievement of important outcomes, other assessment approaches may be better suited to assessing student progress. Assessment that can be used to adapt teaching to meet student needs is called formative assessment. Because the primary purpose of formative assessment is to support student learning, it may arguably be considered the most important assessment practice in which educators engage. This paper will focus on linking assessment to instruction to improve student outcomes through the use of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) within an Outcomes-Driven Model.

Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making - Kaner, Sam (John Wiley & Sons, 2014)
Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups The third edition of this ground–breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well–facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole. This fully updated edition of The Facilitator′s Guide to Participatory Decision–Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision–making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use. New for this edition: 60 pages of brand new skills and tools Many new case examples Major expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book. New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group Dynamics Doubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges. Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.

Collective Impact - Kania, John; Kramer, Mark (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2011)
Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, not the isolated intervention of individual organizations.

Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity - Kania, John; Kramer, Mark (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2013)
Collective impact is upending conventional wisdom on how we achieve social progress.

The water of Systems Change - Kania, John; Kramer, Mark; Senge, Peter (FSG, 2018)
Foundations involved in systems change can increase their odds for success by focusing on the least explicit but most powerful conditions for change, while also turning the lens on themselves. The Water of Systems Change aims to clarify what it means to shift these conditions. We offer the “inverted triangle” framework as an actionable model for funders and others interested in creating systems change, particularly those who are working to advance equity. Top Takeaways Systems change is about advancing equity by shifting the conditions that hold a problem in place. To fully embrace systems change, funders should be prepared to see how their own ways of thinking and acting must change as well. Shifts in system conditions are more likely to be sustained when working at three different levels of change: explicit, semi-explicit, and implicit.

The water of Systems Change: Action learning exercise - Kania, John; Kramer, Mark; Senge, Peter (FSG, 2018)
Based on the “inverted triangle” framework presented in The Water of Systems Change, this activity is designed to help individuals think systemically about social change, explore what is happening below the surface on issues they care about, and determine how they and their organizations can pursue large-scale change in a disciplined and holistic manner. The exercise is divided into 3 parts: Part I uses the “inverted pyramid” introduced in The Water of Systems Change to perform an external assessment of opportunities to make progress on the social or environmental issue you are focused on. Part II uses the same framework to consider internal conditions within yourself and your organization that should change in order for you to better support progress on your issue. Part III takes what was developed in Parts I and II and asks “What to do next?”

How and Why Practitioners Think and Work Politically - Evidence from Chemonics Programming Across Sectors - Kantelberg, Renee; Swift-Morgan, Jennifer; Watson, Bryce (Chemonics International, 2022)
Most development practitioners have long recognized that deep contextual knowledge is crucial to understanding how projects interact with their local systems and, in turn, to navigating these systems. Moreover, this knowledge must complement projects' technical solutions, or they will fall flat and may even undercut project objectives as they clatter down. What, then, explains practitioners' particular interest in TWP as an explicit strategy and more than just "doing good development"? This report responds to that question and to the many calls for a more comprehensive picture of TWP by presenting new evidence of the various forms that TWP may take in practice. The evidence comes from a 2022 study that Chemonics undertook to foster more robust learning about TWP. Specifically, we closely examined Chemonics implemented projects that used or are using various forms of TWP in nine countries: Bangladesh, Iraq, Mozambique, the Philippines, Pakistan, Syria, Timor-Leste, and Tunisia. In conducting the study, we interviewed multiple staff from these projects. We complemented what we learned from these projects with a review of eight additional Chemonics- implemented projects applying TWP that had received dedicated support from Chemonics’ Center for Politically Informed Programming (the Center). We consider these findings alongside those of the recent (2022) USAID-Chemonics study on political economy analysis (PEA) usage to identify and articulate what is different and more effective about PEA processes and TWP practices that have received more support.

Design reality gap issues within an ICT4D project: an assessment of Jigawa State Community Computer Center - Kanya, Rislana Abdulazeez; Good, Alice (2013)
This paper evaluates the Jigawa State Government Community Computer centre project using the design reality gap framework. The purpose of this was to analyse the shortfall between design expectations and implementation realities, in order to find out the current situation of the project. Furthermore to analyse whether it would meet the key stakeholder’s expectation. The Majority of Government ICT Projects is classified as either failure or partial failure. Our research will underpin a case study of Jigawa State Community Computer centre project. To support our argument we conducted a qualitative case study in which we conducted two interviews, and a survey to find out the current status of the project. Our findings indicated that the project can be classified as a partial failure because few of the centres, operating in some areas of the community, offered socio-economic advancement. Our results also indicated that the project design reality gap is quite significant. This gap occurred due to poor planning and implementation of the project. Our research reveals several challenges that could impact upon the successfulness of the project provide a foundation for further research and add to existing literature. The challenges associated with the project we identify include poor state of power supply, lack of community engagement during the project planning and implementation, lack of commitment from the Local Government Administration. Our research has potential in adding ICT4D literature, reveals how ICT4D project evaluation can be carried out using design reality gap framework and provides guideline for policy makers.

Calibrating conservation: new tools for measuring success - Kapos, Valerie; Balmford, Andrew; Aveling, Rosalind; Bubb, Philip; Carey, Peter; Entwistle, Abigail; Hopkins, John; Mulliken, Teresa; Safford, Roger; Stattersfield, Alison; Walpole, Matt; Manica, Andrea (Conservation Letters, 2008)
Conservation practitioners, policy makers, and donors agree that there is an urgent need to identify which conservation approaches are most likely to succeed in order to use more effectively the limited resources available for conservation. While recently developed standards of good practice in conservation are helpful, a framework for evaluation is needed that supports systematic analysis of conservation effectiveness. A conceptual framework and scorecard developed by the Cambridge Conservation Forum help to address common constraints to evaluating conservation success: unclear objectives, ineffective information management, the long time frames of conservation outcomes, scarcity of resources for evaluation, and lack of incentives for such evaluation. For seven major categories of conservation activity, the CCF tools help clarify conservation objectives and provide a standardized framework that is a useful basis for managing information about project outcomes and existing conservation experience. By identifying key outcomes that can predict conservation success and can be assessed in relatively short time frames, they help to make more efficient use of scarce monitoring and evaluation resources. With wide application, the CCF framework and evaluation tool can provide a powerful platform for drawing on the experience of past and ongoing conservation projects to identify quantitatively factors that contribute to conservation success.
Keywords: Conservation effect; Conservation outcomes; Evaluation; Evidence-based conservation; Monitoring; conservation impact; framework; indicators; scorecard

How to make a multilayer pie chart in Excel - Karina Adcock (2021)
Create a multilevel donut chart in excel ——————————————————————————– #exceltips #exceltutorials #excelcharts SUBSCRIBE: https://goo.gl/c46YPs Microsoft Office 365, Beta Channel, Version 2104 ——————————————————————————— IF YOU LIKED THIS VIDEO YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: - Recreating a pie chart from a newspaper in PowerPoint • How to make a pie...

Learning from Life Story Collection and Analysis With Children Who Work in the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Nepal - Karki, Shanta; Apgar, Marina; Snijder, Mieke; Sharma, Ranjana (Institute of Development Studies, 2022)
The CLARISSA Nepal team collected and analysed 400 life stories of children and young people engaged in or affected by the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), particularly in the “Adult Entertainment” sector in Nepal, which includes children working in Dohoris (restaurants playing folk music), dance bars, spa-massage parlours, khaja ghars (tea/snack shop) and guest houses. Stories were also collected from children in CLARISSA’s focus neighbourhoods, children in this category include street connected children and those working in transportation, party palaces, domestic labour and construction sites. Of the 400 stories collected, 350 were collected by adult researchers and 50 were collected by children themselves.
Accepted: 2022-11-04T12:22:13Z Publisher: Institute of Development Studies

Applying the River of Life Method to Support Reflection and Learning in Terre des hommes Nepal - Karki, Shanta; Giri, Roju; Neupane, Sudarshan; Snijder, Mieke; Apgar, Marina (Institute of Development Studies, 2023)
The RoL method is a visual narrative method that helps people tell stories of the past, present, and future. Individuals can use this method to introduce themselves in a fun and descriptive way. A group can use it to understand and reflect on the past and imagine the future of a project. Besides, it can also be used to build a shared view of a process over time while acknowledging different and perhaps contradictory perspectives. The method uses drawings rather than text, making it useful in groups that do not share a common language. Metaphors from a river are used to explore aspects of a story – such as whirlpools depicting challenges or lakes suggesting a sense of calm etc. When used in a group, it is an active method, engaging people in the process of storytelling and listening through visualising their experiences and using metaphors to explore in depth. In CLARISSA, we adapted the RoL method to document our collective understanding of the story of implementation of the programme as part of the programme’s monitoring, evaluation and learning component. The purpose was to surface the details of our process of the systemic Action Research that we are undertaking with children in the worst forms of child labour and business owners. We used the same river metaphors as is often applied when the method is used with individuals.
Accepted: 2023-09-18T10:13:55Z Publisher: Institute of Development Studies

Why is it so hard for non-state actors to be heard? Inside Tanzania's education policies - Katera, Lucas (MAVC, 2015)
Lessons from policy in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania

Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly - Kay, John (Penguin Books, 2010)
"John Kay tells a fast-paced detective story as he searches for the surprising secret to success...Brilliant." -Tim Harford, author of The Logic of Life In this revolutionary book, economist John Kay proves a notion that feels at once paradoxical and deeply commonsensical: the best way to achieve any complex or broadly defined goal, from happiness to preventing forest fires, is the indirect way. We can learn how to achieve our objectives only through a gradual process of risk taking and discovery-what Kay calls obliquity. The author traces this seemingly counterintuitive path to success as it manifests itself in nearly every aspect of life, including business, politics, sports, and more.

Diseño transformacional de proyectos - Kehrer, Daniel (GIZ, 2020)
There are many definitions of the term ‘transformation’ or ‘transformational change’. The first section of the report develops a basic understanding of transformations or transitions (used synonymously) viewed from various perspectives. In this, transformations are defined as processes that use disruptive innovations to change systems into fundamentally new systems that subsequently form the new mainstream. Section two describes existing approaches to environmental and climate finance in international cooperation and discusses them in light of the proposed definition. All of the approaches have the potential to be further refined and in that process often to increase the precision of what is understood by each type of transformation. The definitions already state which criteria and indicators are referred to and how relevant they are. There is wide diversity in the type of criteria and indicators used by the various organisations, and how they are classified, but certain common features can be identified and with the aid of the literature on transformations they can be combined to form a comprehensive framework. With this in mind, the derivation of quality criteria for transformative interventions is explained in section 3.1. Transformational change at one and the same time calls for big decisions and innumerable projects in a particular field of transformation; the projects cannot be planned on the drawing board but still should be coordinated with each other. Section 3.2 offers guidance on this. Section 3.3 argues in favour of focusing more closely on the ‘process promise’ and employing a more iterative and more adaptable commissioning procedure. Finally, section 3.4 introduces two types of indicators under the various criteria: design indicators, which measure the quality of interventions that are aimed at influencing transformations (process orientation), and outcome indicators, which measure the process and/or progress of a transformation itself.

Transformative project design - Kehrer, Daniel (GIZ, 2020)
There are many definitions of the term ‘transformation’ or ‘transformational change’. The first section of the report develops a basic understanding of transformations or transitions (used synonymously) viewed from various perspectives. In this, transformations are defined as processes that use disruptive innovations to change systems into fundamentally new systems that subsequently form the new mainstream. Section two describes existing approaches to environmental and climate finance in international cooperation and discusses them in light of the proposed definition. All of the approaches have the potential to be further refined and in that process often to increase the precision of what is understood by each type of transformation. The definitions already state which criteria and indicators are referred to and how relevant they are. There is wide diversity in the type of criteria and indicators used by the various organisations, and how they are classified, but certain common features can be identified and with the aid of the literature on transformations they can be combined to form a comprehensive framework. With this in mind, the derivation of quality criteria for transformative interventions is explained in section 3.1. Transformational change at one and the same time calls for big decisions and innumerable projects in a particular field of transformation; the projects cannot be planned on the drawing board but still should be coordinated with each other. Section 3.2 offers guidance on this. Section 3.3 argues in favour of focusing more closely on the ‘process promise’ and employing a more iterative and more adaptable commissioning procedure. Finally, section 3.4 introduces two types of indicators under the various criteria: design indicators, which measure the quality of interventions that are aimed at influencing transformations (process orientation), and outcome indicators, which measure the process and/or progress of a transformation itself.

Transforming our work: Getting ready for transformational projects - Kehrer, Daniel; Flossmann-Kraus, Ursula; Ronco Alarcon, Sabrina Valeria; Albers, Vivien; Aschmann, Gwendolin (GIZ, 2020)

Seeking balanced ownership in changing development cooperation relationships - Keijzer, Niels; Klingebiel, Stephan; Örnemark, Charlotte; Scholtes, Fabian (Expert Group for Aid Studies, 2018)
According to the Paris Declaration and the 2030 Agenda, ownership is a prerequisite for effective development cooperation. How can the principle of ownership be promoted in today’s complex development cooperation, in which the numbers of actors have increased? This is the subject of the Expert Group for Aid Studies report Seeking balanced ownership in changing development cooperation relationships. The report contains two country case studies – on Liberia and Rwanda – as well as interviews with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and studies on documents concerning ownership in a Swedish development cooperation context. The authors note that ownership remains relevant as a guiding principle in international development cooperation. The trend from country-to-country cooperation to various forms of support through UN bodies and specialised global funds has created new conditions and competing interests for ownership. An understanding of ownership and how it can be promoted in the complex reality of today needs to be thoroughly re-examined. The study recommends the following: 1. Starting a discussion within the OECD-DAC on effective development cooperation that has global ownership right up to the end of the process. 2. Establishing an international code of conduct in accordance with agreed ownership principles concerning development cooperation funding to and via UN bodies and global funds. 3. Sweden should formulate an explicit policy and approach for how to promote ownership in development cooperation that includes numerous partners.

Navigating with Action Inquiry (Collective Leadership Animations) - Keira Oliver (2020)
"Have you ever wondered if there might be a better way to work together? Perhaps you would like to find ways to avoid habits, or patterns of behaviour, that whilst you say you don’t like them, you seem unable to escape." Written & narrated by Cathy Sharp (Research for Real) and animated by Keira Oliver (Collective Leadership for Scotland) and her son (10yr) in an animation-sprint style (created quickly, but with care), this film summarises the ideas and practices of action inquiry. It introduces a set of statements designed to stretch, challenge and encourage us to talk about these ideas to find better ways to work together.

Inclusion in Making All Voices Count - Kelbert, Alexandra (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
Part of a sequenced learning process for MAVC's Research and Evidence Component, the summary of a thematic discussion led by researcher Evangelia Berdou.

Thinking and working with political settlements - Kelsall, Tim (ODI, 2016)
• In recent years, Political Settlements Analysis (PSA) has become increasingly influential in academic and policy circles • Despite its intuitive appeal, it seems difficult to use in practice • PSA has a natural affinity with Adaptive Development, Thinking and Working Politically, and Doing Development Differently approaches • By answering the simple diagnostic questions supplied here, development partners can identify the types of political settlements in which they work, and draw some broad operational implications

A market system by any other name would smell as sweet - Kessler, Adam; Conroy, Kevin (BEAM Exchange, 2019)
How does Doing Development Differently (DDD) and Problem Driven Iterative Adaption (PDIA) connect to core principles of the MSD approach?

Constituent Voice: Technical Note 1 - Keystone Accountability (Keystone Accountability, 2014)

Teams that Do Development Differently - Khan, Jehanzeb; Fisher, Annette (Global Policy Journal, 2017)

Monitoring and Result Measurement for Adaptive Programming - How to Use Data to Manage a MSD Program: Lessons from PRISMA - Khan, Khaled; Seely, Kevin; Ridwan, Mustika; Mulya, Bodhiya (PRISMA, 2019)
Using monitoring data to improve interventions is harder than it seems. Decision-makers are often busy implementing activities, unclear about their roles in data collection and analysis, and uncertain what data matters most or when. PRISMA, an AUD77 million agricultural Market Systems Development (MSD) programme funded by DFAT Australia, has encountered these challenges. With the programme completing its first five year phase, this case study shares ten key lessons divided into three sections: shaping the culture, developing systems, and top management decisions. These lessons aim to help program, sector and intervention managers make better use of monitoring data to improve interventions.

Making politics work for development: harnessing transparency and citizen engagement - Khemani, Stuti; Ferraz, Claudio; Finan, Frederico S.; Johnson, Stephenson; Louise, Corinne; Abrahams, Scott David; Odugbemi, Adesinaola Michael; Dal Bó, Ernesto; Thapa, Dikshya (The World Bank, 2016)
Too often, government leaders fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. They are encumbered by adverse political incentives, which prevent them from selecting good policies, and they run the risk of losing office should they try to do the right thing. Even when technically sound policies are selected by leaders, implementation can run into perverse behavioral norms among public officials and citizens, who seek to extract private benefits from the public sector. Such behavior might be supported by widespread beliefs that corruption is the norm. Even countries with low corruption and strong institutions experience problems of political incentives and behavior that prevent the public sector from solving shared problems. Ideological polarization among citizens and capture by special interests can lead to policy gridlock and the failure of the state to provide public goods, even in advanced economies. Even educated citizens can hold ideological beliefs about the role of public policy that lead them to deny technical evidence contrary to these beliefs. Too often, government leaders fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. Political constraints can prevent leaders from following sound technical advice, even when leaders have the best of intentions. Making Politics Work for Development: Harnessing Transparency and Citizen Engagement focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. In today’s participative world, citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using modern communication technology to select, sanction, and pressure the leaders who wield power within government. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways even within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Political engagement becomes unhealthy when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, giving rise to a range of government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency—citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government and the consequences of these actions—can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement. The report distills policy lessons for governments, international development partners, and civil society on how best to target transparency initiatives so that the provision of public goods becomes the focus of political contestation. Even so, unhealthy political engagement may persist. But to build institutions that are capable of tackling public goods problems, politics needs to be addressed and cannot be side-stepped. Targeted transparency is one way to move in the right direction: it complements everything else policy makers do and holds the potential to make politics work for development rather than against it. " This pathbreaking report places politics at the heart of the development dialogue—exactly where it belongs. It provides constructive ideas for harnessing the forces of transparency and citizen engagement in ways that are suited to diverse institutional contexts so that reform leaders can overcome political constraints to their countries’ development goals. " Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Director of Research, Development Research Group, The World Bank "This book not only provides an authoritative statement of what we know about how to align political incentives with the interests of society, but it does so with an eye to making change happen even in the face of political opposition. The World Bank will never be the same again. " James Robinson, University Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago " A lesson for us at the World Bank also comes out of this research. We can do more…to work with our clients to diminish political constraints to achieving development goals…To do this we have to overcome the fear of talking about politics, and confront it as part of the challenge of development. That is what we are doing through this report. " Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, The World Bank

Adaptive management of an environmental watering event to enhance native fish spawning and recruitment - King, A. J.; Ward, K. A.; O’connor, P.; Green, D.; Tonkin, Z.; Mahoney, J. (Freshwater Biology, 2010)
1. A common goal of many environmental flow regimes is to maintain and/or enhance the river’s native fish community by increasing the occurrence of successful spawning and recruitment events. However, our understanding of the flow requirements of the early life history of fish is often limited, and hence predicting their response to specific managed flow events is difficult. To overcome this uncertainty requires the use of adaptive management principles in the design, implementation, monitoring and adjustment of environmental flow regimes. 2. The Barmah-Millewa Forest, a large river red gum forest on the Murray River floodplain, south-east Australia, contains a wide variety of ephemeral and permanent aquatic habitats suitable for fish. Flow regulation of the Murray River has significantly altered the natural flood regime of the Forest. In an attempt to alleviate some of the effects of river regulation, the Forest’s water regime is highly managed using a variety of flow control structures and also receives targeted Environmental Water Allocations (EWA). In 2005, the largest environmental flow allocated to date in Australia was delivered at the Forest. 3. This study describes the adaptive management approach employed during the delivery of the 2005 EWA, which successfully achieved multiple ecological goals including enhanced native fish spawning and recruitment. Intensive monitoring of fish spawning and recruitment provided invaluable real-time and ongoing management input for optimising the delivery of environmental water to maximise ecological benefits at Barmah-Millewa Forest and other similar wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin. 4. We discuss possible scenarios for the future application of environmental water and the need for environmental flow events and regimes to be conducted as rigorous, large-scale experiments within an adaptive management framework.
Keywords: floodplain river; regulated flows

Bradford Hill Criteria for Causal Inference - King, Julian (2015)
We think we’re good at determining causality, but we suck at it One of the great challenges in evaluation is determining whether the results we’re seeing are because of the program we’re evaluating, some other influences out there in the big world, or random chance. At one level, this is an everyday, common sense task. As a species we’ve been making judgments about causation for a million years or so. Unfortunately, though, the way we are wired does not predispose us to logical thinking. We are inclined to be led astray by all sorts of biases and heuristics. Over time, the rocket science for dealing with causation has become more sophisticated – a key example being the experimental study design or randomised controlled trial (RCT). And our evidence base about what works has been enriched as a result. But deep down we’re still biased, heuristical beings and not very good at thinking things through. We’ve become so enthusiastic about experimental designs we’re a little inclined to think they are the only way to determine whether A causes B. Such a rigid view is no much use in the real world, where there are all sorts of ethical, conceptual, practical and economic barriers that mean we can’t always conduct RCTs. Even where technically possible, they are not necessarily the best tool for every job.

Different kinds of rubrics - King, Julian (Evaluation and Value for Money, 2023)
Generic, analytic, holistic, orbic, asterisc, escalieric, cephalopodic

Evaluative reasoning in complexity - King, Julian (Evaluation and Value for Investment, 2023)

Sense-making with stakeholders and rubrics - King, Julian (Evaluation and Value for Investment, 2023)
Principles and processes

Value for Investment. A Practical Evaluation Theory - King, Julian (Kinnect Group, 2016)
I am a public policy consultant from Auckland, New Zealand. My practice specializes in evaluation and economic analysis. In this booklet I set out a model for evaluating value for investment (VFI) in social programs. The model defines VFI as an evaluative question about an economic problem. It uses explicit evaluative reasoning to provide a clear answer to the VFI question. Methods are matched to context, to provide the specific mix of evidence (economic and/or other) needed to support a wellreasoned, well-evidenced evaluative judgment.

Value for Investment: Application and Insights. Youth Primary Mental Health and Addictions Evaluation - King, Julian; Crocket, Alicia; Field, Adrian (Dovetail Consulting, 2023)
What’s in the guide? This new document provides: An overview of the VfI approach, including the conceptual principles and processes underpinning it A worked example of the approach in action: evaluating the Youth Primary Mental Health and Addictions initiative in New Zealand Transferrable learning for others considering the use of the VfI approach.

Assessing Value for Money: the Oxford Policy Management Approach - King, Julian; Daniel Wate; Esther Namukasa; Alex Hurrell; Frances Hansford; Patrick Ward; Shiva Faramarzifar (Oxford Policy Management, 2023)
This document offers practical guidance for assessing the Value for Money (VfM) of government- and donor-financed programmes and policy interventions. In line with OPM’s focus and mission, it has been predominantly applied in the international development sector, but the approach upon which it is based is also used in the context of domestic public policy and programmes.1 There is increasing scrutiny on VfM in international development, but a lack of appropriate methods to support its assessment. There is a risk of reaching invalid conclusions if VfM evaluation is tied to a narrow set of indicators devoid of any evaluative judgement—for example, by emphasising the most readily quantifiable measures rather than the most important (but harder to quantify) aspects of performance, or by focusing on the quantification of outputs and outcomes at the expense of more nuanced consideration of their quality, value, and importance. The approach presented in this guide combines theory and practice from evaluation and economics to respond to requirements for accountability and good resource allocation, as well as to support reflection, learning, and adaptive management. It involves developing and implementing a framework for: • organising evidence of performance and VfM; • interpreting the evidence on an agreed basis; and • presenting a clear and robust performance story. This guide sets out a framework for making and presenting judgements in a way that opens both the reasoning process and the evidence to scrutiny. The approach is designed to be used in alignment with broader monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) systems—both for efficiency's sake, and to ensure conceptual coherence between VfM evaluation and wider MEL work. The VfM framework achieves these aims by: • using explicit criteria (aspects of performance) and standards (levels of performance) to provide a transparent basis for making sound judgements about performance and VfM; • combining quantitative and qualitative forms of evidence to support a richer and more nuanced understanding than can be gained from the use of indicators alone; • accommodating economic evaluation (where feasible and appropriate) without limiting the analysis to economic methods and metrics alone; and • incorporating and building on an approach to VfM evaluation which is familiar to international aid donors.

Participatory evaluation design and sense-making - making meaning through co-constructed lenses - King, Julian; Elliott, Kerry; Hollingsworth, Hilary (Evaluation and Value for Investment, 2023)
Based on a presentation at Australian Evaluation Society International Evaluation Conference, Brisbane, 28 September 2023. The importance of participatory approaches to evaluation is well-understood. Involving the right people and balancing voices at the stakeholder table can help to make evaluations more valid, credible, useful, and actually used. Not all evaluations, however, are done in participatory ways. This presentation shares the experience of three evaluators in two recent projects with clients and stakeholders who were unaccustomed to participatory evaluation. In both cases, new ways of working were introduced, requiring participants to come into the evaluation tent, collaborate and learn with us. Engagement processes deliberately focused on incrementally building deep stakeholder input into evaluation design - including key evaluation questions, context analysis, program theory, rubrics, methods of data gathering, and reporting formats. The resulting evaluation frameworks represent an agreed, shared set of lenses for making sense of the evidence. Through this process, relationships and trust were cemented, stakeholders understood the evaluation process and endorsed the resulting frameworks. The client and sector have become more interested, more engaged stakeholders and more savvy evaluation participants and consumers. As the evaluations progress, the evaluation design builds in ongoing stakeholder involvement in reviewing emergent footprints of system change and making evaluative judgements. Participatory approaches are many, varied, and flexible. We will share our reflections and generalisable learning from the participatory approaches we applied in these evaluations. We will invite the audience to reflect on their own practices and experiences, and provoke them to consider whether participatory evaluation is 'just' a methodological option or a foundational element of good evaluation.

OPM’s approach to assessing Value for Money - King, Julian; OPM (Oxford Policy Management, 2018)
This document offers practical guidance for assessing value for money (VfM) in international development programmes. Since 2016, evaluation expert Julian King has been working with OPM to develop and deploy a robust approach to VfM assessment. The approach combines cutting-edge evaluation practice with concepts from economic evaluation to respond to donor requirements for accountability and good resource allocation, as well as to support reflection, learning, and adaptive management.

Building Democracy from Below: Lessons from Western Uganda - King, Sophie; Hickey, Sam (The Journal of Development Studies, 2016)
How to achieve democratisation in the neo-patrimonial and agrarian environments that predominate in sub-Saharan Africa continues to present a challenge for both development theory and practice. Drawing on intensive fieldwork in Western Uganda, this paper argues that Charles Tilly’s ‘democratisation as process’ provides us with the framework required to explain the ways in which particular kinds of association can advance democratisation from below. Moving beyond the current focus on how elite-bargaining and certain associational forms may contribute to liberal forms of democracy, this approach helps identify the intermediate mechanisms involved in building democracy from below, including the significance of challenging categorical inequalities, notably through the role of producer groups, and of building trust networks, cross-class alliances and synergistic relations between civil and political society. The evidence and mode of analysis deployed here help suggest alternative routes for supporting local efforts to build democracy from below in sub-Saharan Africa.
Keywords: FRUGAL

Adaptive Programming and going with the grain: IMAGINE's new water governance model in Goma, DRC - Kirk, Tom; Green, Duncan; Stys, Patrycja; Mosquera, Tom (Development Policy Review, 2023)
Motivation This paper explores adaptive approaches to development programmes that aim at improving service provision in underperforming sectors in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS). It does this through a case study of the Integrated Maji Infrastructure and Governance Initiative for eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's (IMAGINE) public-private partnership model for water provision. Purpose The processes and decisions that culminated in IMAGINE's model emphasize the need for programming that is culturally and politically aware, responsive to events, learns in real-time, is entrepreneurial, and works with the grain of local institutions to support change. Detailed case studies of such ways of working are crucial for programmes that seek to challenge and reform the status quo in FCAS. Methods and approach The paper is based on 42 semi-structured interviews conducted in the summers of 2019 and 2020. They reflect the broad spectrum of actors – individuals, public authorities, and organisations – involved in IMAGINE's evolution. Findings The narrative focuses on IMAGINE's attempts to professionalise and commercialise Goma's water sector. It shows how as IMAGINE repeatedly adapted to ground realities, it took on the characteristics of a public authority, thereby, engendering backlashes that threated its longer-term goals. However, by revisiting its initial values and logics it was able to get things done and achieve it aims. Policy implications IMAGINE's story suggests that adaptive programmes should put politically savvy local development professionals in key positions and enable them to carefully construct coalitions of allies across the systems they aim to disrupt. This may also require them to revisit and adapt their initial ideas, guiding principles and values as greater understandings of development problems are gained. A pubic authorities lens, attuned to the logics programmes seek to address and introduce to FCAS, may help analysts to foreground the implications of such adaptations.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dpr.12691

Guidelines for writing a case study on implementation (Book Project: Smart Implementation in Governance) - Kirsch, Renate (GIZ GmbH, 2015)

Transformation, politics and implementation: smart implementation in governance programs - Kirsch, Renate; Siehl, Elke; Stockmayer, Albrecht (Nomos, 2017)
Working in environments characterised by a high degree of uncertainty, uncontrollability and unpredictability, development agents try to organise complex realities into manageable units. What principles influence the decision on adequate approaches and necessary steps? Through theoretical considerations and nine case studies, the GIZ traces implementation processes and identifies underlying guiding principles which provide the flexibility and adaptability that is necessary for acting in complex contexts. Main findings show that an adaptive and reflexive management structure is crucial for successful implementation. Quick iteration and tight feedback loops facilitate adaptation and reorientation. Contextsensitive knowledge and constant monitoring create a space for learning and innovation. A joint vision for the future which is used for orientation purposes and can be modified according to new findings and developments fosters fruitful cooperation.
OCLC: 1000398466

Time for a Donor Funding Charter? - kiwanja.net (Donor's Chapter, 2014)

Lessons for Effective resilience programs: a case study of the RAIN program in Ethiopia - Kleiman, Shanti (Mercy Corps, 2013)
The RAIN program experience affirms the importance of multi-year and flexible funding as key program design features if progress in resilience building is to be supported in areas with high levels of structural and temporal vulnerability. These features enable management to respond effectively to changing circumstances in order to better meet the needs of communities and to create the necessary conditions for relief-to-development strategies to take hold. Finally, this study found that deliberate and effective coordination between donor agencies can ensure that development gains achieved during one program period are directly leveraged by subsequent programs, thereby increasing the effectiveness of resilience programs.

Improving development aid design and evaluation: Plan for sailboats, not trains - Kleinfeld, Rachel (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015)
How do reforms that require political engagement differ from traditional technical reforms? Why is political engagement different, and what are the implications for design and evaluation? How should development programmes that engage politics be designed? And how can those who fund or implement such programmes evaluate whether their efforts are contributing to reform? This report …
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Agile – where are we at? - Kniberg, Henrik (2017)

Alignment at Scale - Kniberg, Henrik (2016)

Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban - Kniberg, Henrik (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2011)
You know the Agile and Lean development buzzwords, you've read the books. But when systems need a serious overhaul, you need to see how it works in real life, with real situations and people. Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice. Every key point is illustrated with a photo or diagram, and anecdotes bring you inside the project as you discover why and how one organization modernized its workplace in record time.Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice.Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works–and what doesn't–you'll find out how to:Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers.Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement.Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement.Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus.You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.

Scaling Agile @ LEGO and Spotify – my talk at EA träff - Kniberg, Henrik (Crisp, 2017)

Spotify Rhythm - how we get aligned - Kniberg, Henrik (AvailAgility, 2016)
Last month, Henrik Kniberg posted slides from a talk he gave at Agile Sverige on something called Spotify Rhythm - "Spotify’s current approach to getting aligned as a company". While looking through the material, it struck me that what he was describing was a form of Strategy Deployment. This interpretation is based purely on those slides - I haven't had a chance yet to explore this more deeply with Henrik or anyone else from Spotify. I hope I will do some day, but given that caveat, here's how I currently understand the approach in terms of the X-Matrix Model.

The unofficial SCRUM checklist - Kniberg, Henrik (CRISP, 2010)

Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds - Kniberg, Henrik; Ivarsson, Anders (Spotify, 2012)

A Whole New World - Funding and Commissioning in Complexity - Knight, Annabel Davidson; Lowe, Toby; Brossard, Marion; Wilson, Julie (Collaborate & Newcastle University, 2017)
Collaborate and Newcastle University Business School Publish Research into Complexity-Friendly Funding

Changing humanitarian action? - Knox-Clarke, Paul (ALNAP/ODI, 2017)
We live in times of profound change. This has had a great impact on humanitarian needs, and the approaches taken to meet these needs. Changes in technology, ecology, politics, economics and demographics have shaped, and will continue to shape, humanitarian action. Many humanitarians and observers of humanitarian action have suggested that change initiatives in the sector have been unambitious and unsuccessful. Indeed, many people think that the humanitarian system is unable, or unwilling, to make the changes that are required to remain effective and relevant in a rapidly changing world. Following the World Humanitarian Summit many stakeholders have made commitments to significant changes. But can the system change? And if so, how? As a network which exists to support change and improvement, it seems appropriate that ALNAP meets to consider how change occurs in the humanitarian system, and how it can be done better. Find out more about the 31st Annual Meeting by reading the concept note, or by visiting alnap.org/31am.

Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences - Koch, Dirk-Jan (Routledge, 2023)
Foreign aid and international development frequently bring with it a range of unintended consequences, both negative and positive. This book delves into these consequences, providing a fresh and comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing them. The book starts by laying out a theoretical framework based on complexity thinking, before going on to explore the ten most prevalent kinds of unintended effects of foreign aid: backlash effects, conflict effects, migration and resettlement effects, price effects, marginalization effects, behavioural effects, negative spillover effects, governance effects, environmental effects, and ripple effects. Each chapter revolves around a set of concrete case studies, analysing the mechanisms underpinning the unintended effects and proposing ways in which policymakers, practitioners, and evaluators can tackle negative side effects and maximize positive side effects. The book also includes personal testimonies, a succinct overview of unintended effects, and suggestions for further reading. Providing a clear overview of what side effects to anticipate when planning, executing, and evaluating aid, this book will be an important resource for students, development practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Joint Programming in Conflict-Affected and Fragile States - Koenig, Sibylle; Brusset, Emery (Joint Programming - EU, 2019)
On the Joint Programming Practices from the EU in fragile settings

Beyond the Pioneer: Getting inclusive industries to scale - Koh, Harvey; Hedge, Nidhi; Karamchandani, Ashish (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Private Ltd (DTTIPL), 2014)

Rethinking systemic change in practice - perspectives from NUTEC-MD in northern Uganda - Koleros, Andrew (BEAM Exchange, 2016)
Document description This document is currently being finalised and will be published shortly. Please try again soon. Recent research by The BEAM Exchange seeks to understand theoretical perspectives on how market systems approaches can contribute to inclusive economic development through systemic change. It produced three main insights. Economies are evolving systems, building on the mechanisms of variety creation, selection and amplification. Current economic performance, including aspects like the inclusiveness of growth and economic evolution, are shaped by the ability of a society to explore different options for institutional arrangements and adjust them over time. This process of evolution is complex. While some aspects can be designed and managed, others need to be explored through a process of learning and adjustment. This paper responds to these insights by providing a practitioner perspective through the lens of one programme: “Northern Uganda: Transforming the Economy through Climate Smart Agribusiness – Market Development (NUTEC-MD)”, implemented by Palladium Group. It begins with a brief introduction to the programme and key aspects of its design phase. It then provides a summary of the three main research insights, with reflections on their applicability for programme design based on the NUTEC-MD experience. Finally, it provides some conclusions for the wider practitioner community based on this case.

Using Actor-Based Theories Of Change to Conduct Robust Contribution Analysis in Complex Settings - Koleros, Andrew; Mayne, John (Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2019)
The use of theories of change (ToCs) is a hallmark of sound evaluation practice. As interventions have become more complex, the development of ToCs that adequately unpack this complexity has become more challenging. Equally important is the development of evaluable ToCs, necessary for conducting robust theory-based evaluation approaches such as contribution analysis (CA). This article explores one approach to tackling these challenges through the use of nested actor-based ToCs using the case of an impact evaluation of a complex police-reform program in the Democratic Republic of Congo, describing how evaluable nested actor-based ToCs were built to structure the evaluation.
Keywords: Behavioural strategy; COM-B

The Actor-Based Change Framework: A Pragmatic Approach to Developing Program Theory for Interventions in Complex Systems - Koleros, Andrew; Mulkerne, Sean; Oldenbeuving, Mark; Stein, Danielle (American Journal of Evaluation, 2020)
Despite a wide body of literature on the importance of program theory and the need to tackle complexity to improve international development programming, the use of program theory to underpin interventions aimed at facilitating change in complex systems remains a challenge for many program practitioners. The actor-based change framework offers a pragmatic approach to address these challenges, integrating concepts and frameworks drawn from complexity science and behavioral change literature to develop robust program theory for complex interventions. This article presents the conceptual framework for the approach and describes how it has been applied in practice on an evaluation of a security and justice program in Nepal. It concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach in practice and how it can be applied more widely to improve program theory for interventions in complex systems.

Approaches for addressing complexity in programme theory: Experiences in applying the Actor-based Change (ABC) Framework to a variety of international development programmes and evaluations - Koleros, Andrew; Oldenbeuving, Mark (2018)

Thinking and Working Politically in Economic Development Programmes – Some Sprints and Stumbles from a DFID Programme in Kyrgyzstan - Koleros, Andrew; Rinnert, David (From Poverty to Power, 2019)
A DFID programme in Kyrgyzstan offers useful insights into how the Thinking and Working Politically approach can escape from its governance ghetto
Keywords: Case Study

Managing Upward and Downward Accountability in an International Development Project - A Case Study of a World Bank Telecommunications Infrastructure Project in Benin - Kolker, Eva; Kulldorff, Catharina (Master's Thesis, Stockholm School of Economics, 2013)
Keywords: Downward accountability; Upward accountability

Monitoring and Evaluation in the Development Sector - KPMG (KPMG International, 2014)

Systems Change in a Polarized Country - Kramer, Mark R. (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
A growing number of US foundations are adopting practices based on systems change to achieve their goals in the current political environment.

How adaptive M&E from the peace sector can help demonstrate the value of aid - Kratzer, Sebastian (2023)
Over the last decade, the peace sector has been developing and adapting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and tools to fit their contexts and ways of working. This evolution may hold some insights for the aid community in how to go beyond more traditional, backwards-looking M&E to navigate today’s volatile, interest-based world of politics and aid.

Theory amidst complexity – using process tracing in ex-post evaluations - Krueger, Kate; Wright, Molly (New Directions for Evaluation, 2022)
Evaluators who take a complexity-aware approach must consider tradeoffs related to theoretical parsimony, falsifiability, and measurement validity. These tradeoffs may be particularly pronounced with ex-post evaluation designs in which program theory development and monitoring frameworks are often completed before the evaluator is engaged. In this chapter, we argue that theory-based evaluation (TBE) approaches can address unique ex-post evaluation challenges that complexity-aware evaluation (CAE) alone cannot, and that these two sets of approaches are complimentary. We will outline strategies that evaluators may use to conduct rigorous ex-post evaluations of democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) interventions that merge CAE's inductive approaches with a theory-testing structure. It will illustrate these strategies with two case studies of ex-post evaluation using process tracing (PT).
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ev.20524

The adoption of innovation in international development organisations: lessons for development co-operation - Kumpf, Benjamin; Jhunjhunwala, Parnika (OECD Publishing, 2023)
Addressing 21st century development challenges requires investments in innovation, including the use of new approaches and technologies. Currently, many development organisations prioritise investments in isolated innovation pilots that leverage a specific approach or technology rather than pursuing a strategic approach to expand the organisation’s toolbox with innovations that have proven their comparative advantage over what is currently used. This Working Paper addresses this challenge of adopting innovations. How can development organisations institutionalise a new way of working, bringing what was once novel to the core of how business is done? Analysing successful adoption efforts across five DAC agencies, the paper lays out a proposed process for the adoption of innovations. The paper features five case-studies and concludes with a set of lessons and recommendations for policy makers on innovation management generally, and adoption of innovation in particular.

What is technopolitics? A conceptual schema for understanding politics in the digital age Doctoral Student on the Programme on Political Science New School for Social Research - Kurban, Can; Peña-Lopez, Ismael; Haberer, Maria (Revista de Internet, Derecho y Política, 2017)
In this article we seek to revisit what the term ‘technopolitical’ means for democratic politics in our age. We begin by tracing how the term was used and then transformed through various and conflicting adaptations of ICTs (Information and

The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world - Kurtz, C.F.; Snowden, Dave (IBM Systems Journal, 2003)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Definitions of Agile Software Development and Agility - Laanti, Maarit; Similä, Jouni; Abrahamsson, Pekka (Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement, 2013)
The Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles are typically referred to as the definitions of "agile" and "agility". However, many other definitions exist in the literature. Thus the different definitions provide interesting source for research. For each definition we examine where their emphasis is and compare that to the emphases found in the Agile Principles.

Announcement of CLA Learning Network Launch - Lab, Learning (USAID Learning Lab, 2016)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL), together with the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment’s localworks program, is pleased to announce the launch of a Learning Network focused on building the evidence base for Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA).

Adaptive Management Leaders Launch Practical Adaptation Network (PAN) - Labs, Feedback (FeedbackLabs, 2016)
Great things can happen at the frontier of theory and practice. When Feedback Labs worked with USAID’s Global Development Lab to bring together leaders in adaptive management at the White House on June 15th, we were pleased that we were able to move past the ongoing conceptual conversations toward discussing what we could do in concrete terms to implement adaptive management in practice.

Introduction to Project Management - The Case of GIZ Projects - Lacroix, Eric J. (Khulna University, 2015)
In this course, we will try to understand the complexity and the structure of the management of a development project implemented by the GIZ for the German Development cooperation. We will first define the frame of management and project to enter in the map of two logics. Then, we will overfly the 5 success factors of Capacity WORKS, with concrete examples in annexe. It will bring us to the monitoring, the standard processes in GIZ cooperation projects, the basic tools for project implementation and the evaluation. The team building will allow us to enter in a specific aspect of project management.

Facilities deserve a place in development - Lacy, Jacqui de (Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre, 2017)
There are different ways to deliver aid programs, DFAT often uses facilities in its larger relationships, what are the rationales and risks behind this?

Strategy Testing: An innovative approach to monitoring highly flexible aid programs - Ladner, Debra (The Asia Foundation, 2015)
The international development community has increasingly embraced the idea that finding durable solutions to complex development problems requires new ways of working that move beyond industry norms. This paper makes an important contribution to the current debate by outlining an innovative monitoring system called Strategy Testing (ST). This is the third paper in the Working Politically in Practice paper series, launched together with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Measuring and Monitoring Adaptive Learning: A Landscape Review - LaFond, Anne; Adrian, Haley (USAID MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator, 2022)
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 evaluation of adaptive learning is an emergent field aiming to monitor how adaptive learning processes have been introduced, how they are used, and whether they are having the intended results. Although there is a growing body of literature on adaptive programming more generally, there is a limited knowledge base on the monitoring and evaluation of adaptive learning interventions and their impacts. Unlike other implementation strategies or program management approaches, there are no standard metrics or a monitoring and evaluation framework to track the integration, implementation, and effectiveness of adaptive learning in health programming.

Scaling the impact of sustainability initiatives: a typology of amplification processes - Lam, David P. M.; Martín-López, Berta; Wiek, Arnim; Bennett, Elena M.; Frantzeskaki, Niki; Horcea-Milcu, Andra I.; Lang, Daniel J. (Urban Transformations, 2020)
Amplifying the impact of sustainability initiatives to foster transformations in urban and rural contexts, has received increasing attention in resilience, social innovation, and sustainability transitions research. We review the literature on amplification frameworks and propose an integrative typology of eight processes, which aim to increase the impact of such initiatives. The eight amplification processes are: stabilizing, speeding up, growing, replicating, transferring, spreading, scaling up, and scaling deep. We aggregated these processes into three categories: amplifying within, amplifying out, and amplifying beyond. This integrative typology aims to stimulate the debate on impact amplification from urban and rural sustainability initiatives across research areas to support sustainability transformations. We propose going beyond an understanding of amplification, which focuses only on the increase of numbers of sustainability initiatives, by considering how these initiatives create transformative change.
Keywords: City; Rural; Scaling; Transformation; Transition; Transition initiative; Urban

Community-based monitoring of Indigenous food security in a changing climate: Global trends and future directions - Lam, Steven; Dodd, Warren; Skinner, Kelly; Papadopoulos, Andrew; Zivot, Chloe; Ford, James; Garcia, Patricia J.; Team, IHACC Research; Harper, Sherilee L. (Environmental Research Letters, 2019)
Climate change is expected to exacerbate existing food security challenges, especially in Indigenous communities worldwide. Community-based monitoring is considered a promising strategy to improve monitoring of, and local adaptation to climatic and environmental change. Yet, it is unclear how this approach can be applied in food security or Indigenous contexts. The objectives of this paper are to: 1) review and synthesize the published literature on community-based monitoring of Indigenous food security; and, 2) identify gaps and trends in these monitoring efforts in the context of climate change. Using a systematic search and screening process, we identified 86 published articles. To be included, articles had to be published in a journal, describe a community-based monitoring system, describe any aspect of food security, and explicitly mention an Indigenous community. Relevant articles were thematically analyzed to characterize elements of community-based monitoring in the context of climate change. Results show that the number of articles published over time was steady and increased more than two-fold within the last five years. The reviewed articles reported on monitoring mainly in North America (37%) and South America (28%). In general, monitoring was either collaborative with local communities (51%) or externally-driven (37%), and focused primarily on tracking wildlife (29%), followed by natural resources (16%), environmental change (15%), fisheries (13%), climate change (9%), or some combination of these topics (18%). This review provides an evidence-base on the uses, characteristics, and opportunities of community-based monitoring, to guide future food security monitoring efforts in the context of climate change.

Citizens Against Corruption: Report from the Front Line - Landell-Mills, Pierre (Matador, 2013)
Citizens Against Corruption: Report From The Front Line tells the story of how groups of courageous and dedicated citizens across the globe are taking direct action to root out corruption. It shows how people are no longer prepared to accept the predatory activities of dishonest officials and are challenging their scams. It draws on over 200 unique case studies that describe initiatives undertaken by 130 civil society organisations (CSOs) which engage directly with public agencies to stop the bribery and extortion that damages peoples' lives and obstructs social and economic progress. This book challenges the notion that, at best, civil society can only have a marginal impact on reducing corruption and argues that aid donors need to radically rethink their assistance for governance reform. Part 1 analyses the role citizens can play in fighting corruption and promoting good governance and briefly tells the story of the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF). Part 2 presents studies of India, Mongolia, Philippines, and Uganda - each with its unique history and distinctive circumstances - to illustrate activities undertaken by CSOs to root out corruption, including the tools and approaches that are being used to build pressure on corrupt public agencies to become transparent and accountable. Part 3 addresses key themes - strengthening the rule of law, putting in place effective national anti-corruption strategies and institutions, making public buying and selling honest, promoting grassroots monitoring of public expenditures and the provision of public services, mounting media campaigns to expose and defeat corruption, and empowering ordinary citizens to keep watch on what actually happens at the point of delivery of public services. Part 4 is a summary of lessons learnt and explores the potential, as well as the risks and limitations, of civic activism in a world where greed and dishonesty is the norm. Finally, the book explores the opportunities and dangers faced by aid donors in supporting local CSOs and charts a way forward. Citizens Against Corruption: Report From The Front Line will be of interest to staff working in CSOs and aid agencies, policy analysts and researchers concerned about corruption and poor governance.

The Science of Using Science: Researching the Use of Research Evidence in Decision-Making - Langer, Laurenz; Tripney, Janice; Gough, David (EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, 2016)

Paradoxes and partnerships: a study of knowledge exploration and exploitation in international development programmes - Lannon, John; Walsh, John N. (Journal of Knowledge Management, 2019)
Purpose – This paper aims to look at how organisational partnerships balance knowledge exploration and exploitation in contexts that are rife with paradoxes. It draws on paradox theory to examine the partnership’s response to the explore-exploit relationship.

Iterative and incremental developments: A brief history - Larman, Craig; Basili, Victor R. (Computer, 2003)
Although many view iterative and incremental development as a modern practice, its application dates as far back as the mid-1950s. Prominent software-engineering thought leaders from each succeeding decade supported IID practices, and many large projects used them successfully. These practices may have differed in their details, but all had a common theme-to avoid a single-pass sequential, document-driven, gated-step approach.
Keywords: Agile methods; Application software; Feedback; Government; History; Iterative and incremental developments; Iterative methods; Personnel; Programming; Radio access networks; Terminology; Testing; iterative enhancement; software engineering; software system

You Cannot Go it Alone: Learning from Cooperative Relationships in Civil Society Budget Campaigns - Larsen, Jillian (IBP, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Monday morning in Kigali: what do you do when you get off the plane? Practical guidance for PDIA practitioners - LASER (DFID-LASER Programme, 2016)
In order to help enhance the effectiveness of donors and development practitioners on the ground, LASER has produced a range of practical guidance and tools. These are primarily intended for the international development community engaged in designing and implementing investment climate programmes, though can also be used more widely by other stakeholders across sectors. General guidance and tools: Monday morning in Kigali January 2016 - what do you do when you get off the plane? Practical guidance for PDIA practitioners
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

Politically smart approaches to donor investment climate programming. A Guidance Note - LASER (DFID-LASER Programme, 2016)
In order to help enhance the effectiveness of donors and development practitioners on the ground, LASER has produced a range of practical guidance and tools. These are primarily intended for the international development community engaged in designing and implementing investment climate programmes, though can also be used more widely by other stakeholders across sectors. General guidance and tools: Politically smart approaches to donor investment climate programming (and annexes) Revised February 2016 - sets out practical advice on how to adopt a politically smart (which requires being both ‘politically informed’ and ‘politically astute’) approach to programming. The annexes include a traffic light matrix for initial high level analysis; a problem diary template with examples; and an example of a flexible theory of change for adaptive, large scale programming
Keywords: Practice

In the goldfish bowl: science and technology policy dialogues in a digital world - Latta, Susie; Mulcare, Charlotte; Zacharzewski, Anthony (Sciencewise, 2013)

Measuring Impact: A Learning Approach to Strengthening USAID Biodiversity Programs - Lauck, Liz (2014)

Laudes Rubrics - Measurement and Learning Approach - Laudes Foundation (Laudes Foundation, 2023)
How can we measure and learn when promoting systems change? It’s a challenge that has inspired Laudes Foundation to develop a rubrics-based methodology to help us, our partners and the wider field of philanthropy, understand our contribution to change, while learning and adapting to new and unforeseen circumstances. Change cannot be captured by numbers alone because metrics put the focus on what can be counted, not always what’s most important. Rubrics are a framework that set a standard for what ‘good’ looks like – and create a shared language for describing and assessing it using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. At Laudes Foundation, the rubrics are integrated into our grantmaking processes – from the design phase through to measurement, evaluation and learning. The four Laudes Foundation rubrics categories Laudes Foundation has developed 21 rubrics that work across different levels, from processes to long-term impact. When measuring a specific initiative, a smaller set of relevant rubrics are chosen and assessed on a rating scale from ‘harmful’ to ‘thrivable’. The 21 rubrics are categorised into four groups, with some natural overlap between categories B, C and D. Category A focuses on the process-related aspects of initiatives, including design, implementation, monitoring, communication and learning, and organisation and network effectiveness. Category B focuses on the early and later changes that need to happen to create the right conditions to achieve the 2025 outcomes. Category C captures the 2025 outcomes, focusing on how policymakers, financiers, business leaders, and workers and producers behave. Category D captures the 2030 impacts, describing the new reality created as a result of sustained efforts.

Developmental evaluation: Bridging the gaps between proposal, program, and practice , Developmental evaluation: Bridging the gaps between proposal, program, and practice - Lawrence, Rachael B.; Rallis, Sharon F.; Davis, Laura C.; Harrington, Karen (Evaluation, 2018)
Developmental evaluation supports grant-funded initiatives seeking innovation and change. Programs born from aspirational grant language and plans often need guidance as they work toward creating workable models for social innovation. This article describes the challenge of designing and implementing complex programs and presents a case that illustrates how a program moves from proposal to practice. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association Capacity Building Network is a complex intervention, funded by the US federal government, aimed at raising school capacity to serve students with disabilities and English language learners. Developmental evaluation served to bridge the gaps between an aspirational proposal, an ambitious and ambiguous program plan, and emerging practices to serve this population of students. Jointly reviewing our experience in this developmental evaluation, the evaluation team and a program director share important thematic lessons learned about the developmental evaluation approach., Developmental evaluation supports grant-funded initiatives seeking innovation and change. Programs born from aspirational grant language and plans often need guidance as they work toward creating workable models for social innovation. This article describes the challenge of designing and implementing complex programs and presents a case that illustrates how a program moves from proposal to practice. The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association Capacity Building Network is a complex intervention, funded by the US federal government, aimed at raising school capacity to serve students with disabilities and English language learners. Developmental evaluation served to bridge the gaps between an aspirational proposal, an ambitious and ambiguous program plan, and emerging practices to serve this population of students. Jointly reviewing our experience in this developmental evaluation, the evaluation team and a program director share important thematic lessons learned about the developmental evaluation approach.

Mainsreaming gender in an adaptive, politically smart governance programme - Lessons from Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tanzania - Laws, Ed (ODI, 2020)
• This paper looks at the experience of gender mainstreaming in the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) programme – an adaptive, politically smart governance programme in Tanzania. • When development programmes try to engage with political stakeholders and align with the priorities of wider coalitions there is a danger that gender equality is de-prioritised. • It is important that formal political economy analysis, as well as other data collection, analysis and consultation exercises, are gender-sensitive. Teams should also look for ways to make gendered political and power analysis part of the everyday routine practice of staff. • Working politically and adaptively to advance gender objectives calls for staff with a specific skillset, as well as links to appropriate networks and political stakeholders. It also implies establishing checks and incentives to hold staff and partners accountable for gender objectives, and strong and consistent messaging from team leaders.

Rethinking value for money for adaptive, politically smart programmes - Lessons from Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tanzania - Laws, Ed (ODI, 2020)
- 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 doing this well. • Flexible and adaptive programmes are deliberately designed to experiment and to make small investments in different areas, to see what will work. While this is often important for making headway on complex challenges, it can also leave partners exposed and can undermine trust. • It can also be challenging to balance the need to meet accountability commitments to donors while allowing local partners to take the lead in pursuing their own objectives. • Co-creating plans, priorities and activities with partners has the potential to resolve some of these tensions. But the time and patience required to do this successfully should not be underestimated, and can be difficult to maintain in the face of pressure from donors to see results within a confined timeframe.

Thinking and working politically in Somalia: A case study on the Somalia Stability Fund - Laws, Ed (TWP Coommunity of Practice and ODI, 2018)

Working effectively through partnerships - Lessons from Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tanzania - Laws, Ed (ODI, 2020)
• 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 to more effective alternatives. • This means that adaptive programmes will achieve their potential to deliver strong VfM when their processes are good – when appraisal of experimental efforts is timely, consistent, knowledgeable and politically astute. As these programmes mature in their implementation phase, VfM evaluation should be focused on checking for a culture of adaptation and learning supported by strong adaptive processes. • While economy is important for adaptive programmes, it is also important that keeping costs low does not deprive teams of the resources, staff, and management and administration time they need to gather information, experiment, learn and adapt.

Thinking and working politically: An introduction to key ideas, examples and further reading - Laws, Ed; Marquette, Heather (2018)

Thinking and working politically: Reviewing the evidence on the integration of politics into development practice over the past decade - Laws, Ed; Marquette, Heather (TWP Community of Practice, 2018)

LearnAdapt: a synthesis of our work on adaptive programming with DFID/FCDO (2017–2020) - Laws, Ed; Pett, Jamie; Proud, Emma; Rocha Menocal, Alina (ODI, 2021)
Key takeaways. • Development is not linear or straightforward, but rather complex, uncertain and context-specific. This calls for international development actors to work differently, in ways that are based on deliberate experimentation, learning and adaptation, to inform decisions and drive effective development. • Although it might go by different names, adaptive programming has been used in a variety of areas and fields in both the public and private sectors. Development practitioners have much to learn from and contribute to these different approaches and experiences. • Trust and relationship-building across all relevant stakeholders are among the most critical enabling factors for adaptive management. They are essential to give partners the space, autonomy and authority needed to try, test, reflect, iterate and feed back at the frontline of implementation, and to give donors the confidence that decisions are being made on the basis of evidence and learning to improve effectiveness. • There is an urgent need to rethink how accountability requirements, results frameworks, value for money considerations, performance markers, procurement and contracting mechanisms and other processes are understood and applied so that they are better aligned with and can support adaptive management more effectively. • The role of senior managers leading adaptive programmes from the donor side should be to create a space for experimentation and learning. Funders should hold their partners accountable for learning and how it feeds into effective programming, rather than for delivering on predetermined targets. • While formal guidance is important, leadership, champions, institutional incentives, a supportive management culture and appropriate mindsets are essential to encourage adaptive ways of working. • Adaptive management is resource-intensive. It requires skill, commitment, time for building trust and investments in learning. It is a journey, not an immediate destination – so it calls for patience, open-mindedness and a more nuanced approach to risk.

Value for money and adaptive programming - Approaches, measures and management - Laws, Ed; Valters, Craig (ODI, 2021)
- The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)’s standard economy, efficiency, effectiveness/cost-effectiveness and equity (4E) framework is still relevant for approaching, measuring and managing value for money (VfM) for adaptive programmes. • However, this framework needs to be reframed to capture and incentivise flexibility, learning and adaptation. • VfM appraisal and reporting should be done in a way that draws on beneficiary feedback and informs good decision-making, rather than just being a compliance exercise. • If VfM appraisal and reporting cannot be done appropriately for adaptive programmes, it should be avoided or minimised. There is a risk of diverting time and resources from more suitable tools and methods.

Is the problem driven iterative adaptation approach (PDIA) a panacea for public financial management reform? Evidence from six African countries - Lawson, Andrew; Harris, Jamelia (World Development Perspectives, 2023)
This article assesses the application of the problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) approach to public financial management reform in six African countries. It draws on primary data collected using a mix of interviews, overt participation observations and a short survey. PDIA responds to shortcomings in orthodox approaches to reform and technical assistance in developing countries. It stresses local solutions to local problems, achieved through experimentation and adaptation. The principles of PDIA are appealing, but its empirical assessment is in its infancy. This study aims to fill part of this gap. Findings show that PDIA delivers results in the short-term, particularly in cases where there is an influential authorising agent and dedicated team. Progress was less forthcoming for reforms that required high level political buy-in from senior officials. The approach does exceptionally well to develop staff capability, transferable skills, and local empowerment to solve local problems, thus potentially benefitting future reforms.

Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century - Lawson, Phil; Lindstrom, Robert L. (Sphericity Press, 2004)
In this concise, illustrated work exploring the dynamics of living in the 21st century, Phil Lawson and Robert L. Lindstrom show us how we individually and collectively shape the future - a future no longer dominated by traditional hierarchies and concentrated power centers. The authors explain why, in this dawning era of interconnection and interdependency, we require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and act. Using mythological imagery in the form of The Sphere and an innovative and adaptive vocabulary, they introduce us to concepts and processes for reshaping our lives, our organizations and our world for the better. In addition, they introduce the Spherical Modeling Tool (SMT), a practical hands-on awareness application. BEING SPHERICAL GUIDES US AS WE LEARN TO: * Prepare for a future we cannot even vaguely predict. * Raise our children well in a climate of moral uncertainty. * Create viable organizations in an era of extreme complexity. * Come to the aid of an abused and ailing planet. AS WE LEARN TO SEE THE SPHERE WE: * Understand why we do what we do and what to do differently. * Discover creative solutions to longstanding problems. * Connect and reconnect within ourselves and with others. * Ready ourselves of quantum leaps in inspiration and awareness. THE GREATER OUR SPHERICAL INTEGRITY THE BETTER WE: * Flex with internal and external pressures. * Adapt to disorienting and accelerating change. * Respond to unpredictable and uncontrollable conditions. * Roll through hard times and bounce forward from adversity. Excerpted from Being Spherical: Reshaping Our Lives and Our World for the 21st Century by Phil Lawson, Robert L. Lindstrom. Copyright 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Agile Project Management For Dummies - Layton, Mark C. (John Wiley & Sons, 2012)
Be flexible and faster with Agile project management As mobile and web technologies continue to evolve rapidly, there is added pressure to develop and implement software projects in weeks instead of months. Agile Project Management For Dummies can make that happen. This is the first book to provide a simple, step–by–step guide to Agile Project Management approaches, tools, and techniques. With the fast pace of mobile and web technology development, software project development must keep pace; Agile Project Management enables developers to complete and implement projects more quickly and this book shows you how. Offers a practical context for understanding and applying Agile techniques, moving from theory into actual practice Explains when to use Agile and how to avoid common pitfalls Written by experts who know how to apply the principles in real–world situations Agile Project Management For Dummies enables you to understand and apply Agile principles for faster, more accurate development.

Scrum For Dummies - Layton, Mark C. (John Wiley & Sons, 2015)
Practice an agile form of management to stop wasting time and money Scrum For Dummies is an easy to use guide to managing the tricky transition from a traditional project management methodology to the new and most popular agile framework. As the most efficient, successful methodology for team project management, Scrum relies on transparency, flexibility, and fluidity to deliver a final product that fulfills the needs of all stakeholders. Written in easy–to–read Dummies style, this book walks you through the core principles of Scrum and provides a roadmap for tangible implementation. The vast majority of projects go over budget, and billions of dollars are wasted every year on overruns. Put a stop to this wasteful leakage by switching to a management style that keeps all participants informed, up–to–date, and accountable. Authored by a Certified Scrum Trainer, Mark Layton, Scrum For Dummies covers the key ideas and processes behind Scrum methodologies, and presents the inner workings of the plan in an engaging and accessible format. Topics include: The Scrum values, roles, artifacts, and activities that make up the principle of this methodology When and how best to use Scrum The differences between Scrum and other agile methodologies Using Scrum for IT, finance, construction, health care, and more The book also delves into the everyday use of Scrum, and how it can help you achieve your own personal goals outside of work. There′s a reason why scrum is quickly becoming the standard approach to project management it works! If you want to stop wasting time and start producing more effectively, Scrum For Dummies is the guide that will get you there.

Applying social learning where ‘business-as-usual’ solutions no longer work for complex problems and programs - Le Borgne, Ewen (CCSL Learning Brief, 2016)
Key messages • Social learning facilitates sharing and learning beyond individuals to networks and systems. Through a facilitated, iterative process of joint work, dialogue and reflection, new shared ways of knowing emerge that lead to changes in practice. • Social learning has real potential to unlock change and transform relationships between actors involved in complex programs and/or dealing with ‘wicked problems’. Adversely it is not advisable to pursue for simple initiatives. • Social learning offers many thematic and pragmatic entry points to be embedded in the CGIAR research programs around partnerships, innovation systems, monitoring and evaluation.

System Innovation on Purpose - Leadbeater, Charles; Winhall, Jennie (The Rockwool Foundation, 2021)
In Building Better Systems, we introduced four keys to unlock system innovation: purpose and power, relationships and resource flows. These four keys make up a set. Systems are often hard to change because power, relationships, and resource flows are locked together in a reinforcing pattern to serve the system’s current purpose. Systems start to change fundamentally when this pattern is disrupted and opened up. Then a new configuration can emerge, serving a new purpose. In this essay series we delve deeper into these four keys and provide practical advice on how they can be put to use. This essay is about the role that purpose plays in orchestrating complex systems and how system innovators can create a new system around a new sense of purpose.

How to manage complexity: four lessons for DFID’s new Secretary of State - LearnAdapt (Medium, 2019)
Lessons for DFID in addressing complex problems without creating complicated, workload heavy programmes.

An analysis of what CLA looks like in Development Programming - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)

Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA). Framework and Maturity Matrix Overview - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)

Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting. Framework & Key Concepts - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)

Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting: summary of the literature review (2016.08) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)
LEARN and USAID/PPL are managing an area of work known as Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer key learning questions:

Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting: summary of the literature review (2017 update) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)
LEARN and USAID/PPL are managing an area of work known as Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer key learning questions:

Evidence base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting: summary of the literature review (2020 update) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2020)
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? ● If so, how? And under what conditions? ● How do we know? How do we measure any contribution that CLA makes to development results? As we began this work, we identified the need to conduct a literature review looking at these questions to understand what is known, what remains unknown, and how others have tried to answer these questions to date. We were primarily interested in answering these questions: ● What evidence is there, if any, that collaborating, learning, and/or adapting contributes to organizational effectiveness, development outcomes, or both? What are the strongest pieces of evidence? ● Does the literature identify any factors critical to CLA that are not currently included in the CLA framework? ● Who else is working on measuring the impact of collaborating, learning and adapting? ● What methods and measures did researchers use to study the effects of collaborating, learning, and adapting? ● Where are there gaps in the research relevant to collaborating, learning, and adapting? ● When taken together, what practical guidance does the evidence for collaborating, learning, and adapting offer to practitioners and policy makers to improve organizational effectiveness and development outcomes?

Landscape Analysis of Learing Agendas: USAID/Washington and beyond - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY U.S. government agencies and development organizations around the world are increasingly recognizing and supporting learning activities— often informed by a learning agenda—as important tools for improving organizational effectiveness and efficiency. A learning agenda comprises a set of broad questions directly related to the work that an agency conducts; when answered, they enable the agency to work more effectively and efficiently, particularly pertaining to evaluation, evidence, and decisionmaking. This report surveys the landscape of learning agendas at USAID and beyond to inform the learning agenda initiative planned by the Office of Learning, Evaluation, and Research (LER) in the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL). Reporting on research conducted over a 6-month period (September 2016 to February 2017), this landscape analysis focuses on six documented, office-, bureau-, or initiative-wide learning agendas being used at USAID/Washington. It also considers 11 new or noteworthy learning initiatives at USAID and five learning efforts at other federal agencies. The research team interviewed 60 staff from 20 USAID offices and bureaus, as well as staff from five other federal agencies. (See Annexes 1 through IV for more information.) The team also convened two focus groups: one with staff in USAID/Washington who had recently returned from serving in Missions, and one with PPL staff who discussed that bureau’s learning activities. The report details the interviewees’ remarks on six topics:  Motivations behind their decisions to pursue a learning agenda, such as expectations of accountability, especially in response to leadership demands  The key benefits emerging from their learning agenda efforts, which have included identifying gaps in knowledge and evidence, and supporting other cultural and organizational change processes  The participatory and consultative strategies they used to engage with stakeholders, including engagement with Mission staff and inclusion of academics and outside experts  The learning activities and products related to their initiatives  Challenges and strategies on resources, dissemination, and utilization, including ways to update their learning agenda to ensure that it remains a “living document”  Recommendations they had for PPL and others considering embarking on a learning agenda initiative

LEARN End of Contract Report - Learning Lab (USAID, 2020)
In September of 2014, USAID’s Office of Learning, Evaluation & Research (LER) awarded the Learning and Knowledge Management (LEARN) contract to Dexis Consulting Group and subcontractor RTI International.1 This document—the End of Contract Report—captures five and half years of results and reflections for our stakeholders. Our intention is to share the good and the bad, and while this report would not be considered a “tell all,” we think we have a story worth sharing, particularly to USAID CORs and AORs, activity managers, and other implementers of institutional support contracts.2 LEARN’s primary purpose was to support organizational change at USAID. More specifically, the contract was focused on helping USAID staff integrate collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) approaches into the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of programs (what is known at USAID as the Program Cycle). It was clear that most USAID staff, whether they realized it or not, were already integrating CLA into their work to some extent. The focus of our efforts, therefore, was to make those practices more systematic, intentional, resourced, and ultimately more widespread throughout the Agency, which would have a ripple effect on implementing partners and even other stakeholders, such as host country governments. This was based on the theory—later borne out by evidence—that by becoming a better learning organization, USAID could be a more effective development organization. And that theory brought the USAID CLA team within USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning & Learning (PPL) and LEARN contractors together, driven by a shared purpose of improving how USAID does business. LEARN was designed based on this belief and, as you might expect from a learning-oriented contract, began with more questions than answers. Primary among those questions was: could an institutional support contract do more than carry out requested services—could it actually accelerate positive organizational change at USAID? And if so, how and under what conditions?

LEARN Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning Plan - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)
LEARN and USAID/PPL are managing an area of work known as Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer key learning questions:

Learning Lab - Collaborate, Learn and Adapt for better development outcomes - Learning Lab (USAID, 2013)
CLA is: a component of several missions' CDCSes. a conceptual framework for some principles and operational processes that can enable USAID to become a more effective learning organization and thereby a more effective development organization. an approach to facilitating local participation and capacity and promoting country-led development. For more information on CLA visit:

Two Tunes, One Dance: Keeping Programming Agile - Learning Lab (USAID Learning Lab, 2017)

What difference does CLA make to development? Key findings from a recent literature review (2020 update) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2020)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning and its LEARN support contract are working to integrate systematic, intentional and resourced collaborating, learning and adapting (CLA) throughout program planning and implementation to achieve more effective development programs. As part of this effort, USAID is exploring several approaches to understand whether and how strategic collaboration, continuous learning and adaptive management make a difference to organizational effectiveness and development outcomes. To begin this work, we have undertaken a foundational literature review of academic and gray literature to answer our key learning questions: • Does an intentional, systematic and resourced approach to collaborating, learning and adapting contribute to organizational effectiveness? To development outcomes? • If so, how? And under what circumstances? • How do we measure the contribution? The 13 key findings, mapped to the CLA Framework below, are described in greater detail in the following pages.

How useful are RCTs in evaluating transparency and accountability projects? - Leavy, Jennifer (IDS, 2014)

The role of social learning in adaptiveness: insights from water management - Lebel, Louis; Grothmann, Torsten; Siebenhüner, Bernd (International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2010)
The article introduces the notion of adaptiveness and discusses the role of social learning in it. Adaptiveness refers to the capacity of a social actor or social–ecological system to adapt in response to, or in anticipation of, changes in the environment. We explore arguments both from a theoretical perspective and through illustrations from case studies of water management in the Alps of Europe and Mekong in southeast Asia. We propose and illustrate that social learning processes are important for building adaptiveness in several ways and at different scales. Social learning can help cope with informational uncertainty; reduce normative uncertainty; build consensus on criteria for monitoring and evaluation; empower stakeholders to take adaptive actions; reduce conflicts and identify synergies between adaptations; and improve fairness of decisions and actions. Findings in the case studies provide some support for these generalizations but often with caveats related to diversity of stakeholder interests, levels of shared understanding versus contested knowledge and scale of coordination. For this reason, we suggest that future work pays greater attention to issues of agency, knowledge and scale: What strategies have individuals and organizations pursued in successful examples of social learning? How are the boundaries and interactions between science, policy and practice managed? How does social learning occur across spatial and temporal scales?
Keywords: Adaptation; European Alps; Fairness; Mekong River; Social learning; Uncertainty; Water management

Crisis relief for adults & families everywhere - Featuring the mighty micro-VCoL - Lectica (Lectica Live, 2020)
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, we're open-sourcing our most effective stress- and crisis-management learning tools. We call these tools micro-VCoLs™. All of the micro-VCoLs shared here can be practiced effectively just by following the instructions.

Virtuous cycles of learning (VCoL) and the +7 skills - Lectica (Lectica Live, 2020)
VCoL is a cycle of goal setting, information seeking, application, and reflection. Its +7 skills include reflectivity, awareness, seeking and evaluating information, making connections, applying knowledge, seeking and working with feedback, and recognizing and overcoming built-in biases. VCoLing engages the whole learner. By this, we mean that it engages learners emotionally, physically, and intellectually, leveraging both conscious and unconscious mental processes. VCoLing ensures that new knowledge is integrated into existing knowledge in a way that makes it useful and "sticky." When people work with our assessments, they're not only building knowledge, they're also nurturing the dispositions and skills required for a lifetime of learning and development.

Regional Healthcare Ecosystem Analyst for Healthcare Associated Infections - Lee, Bruce Y. (Grantome, 2018)
Understanding and preventing the spread of both endemic and emerging healthcare-associated infectious diseases throughout hospitals and nursing homes is a national priority. Our work has shown that the many disparate inpatient healthcare facilities in a region can form a complex healthcare ecosystem connected by both direct and indirect patient sharing allowing pathogens in one health care facility to readily spread to other facilities. Our goal is to further develop RHEA (Regional Healthcare Ecosystem Analyst) into a user-friendly software tool that decision makers (e.g., policy makers, funders, product developers and manufacturers, healthcare administrators, infection prevention specialists, researchers, and educators) can readily use to help healthcare ecosystems prevent and control the spread of an endemic pathogen, methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and an emerging pathogen, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). This next generation of RHEA will bring multiple innovations by: 1) further elucidating the interconnectedness of the ecosystem and showcasing the value of cooperation among facilities versus the current individual facility approach to infectious disease control, 2) incorporating new healthcare ecosystem responses for endemic MRSA and emerging CRE, 3) continuing our work integrating economic and operational models into a framework of infectious disease epidemiological models, 4) imbuing virtual patients with characteristics linked to MRSA and CRE transmission and outcome risk, 5) building a comprehensive """"""""virtual laboratory"""""""" to help address many existing and future healthcare ecosystem infectious disease questions, and 6) building a user-friendly modeling tool that decision makers can use. The project will continue our team's longstanding modeling work and developing computational tools for decision makers via three specific aims. First, completing Specific Aim 1 will expand RHEA by adding the following capabilities: i) integrated clinical outcome and economic models, ii) more extensive and detailed patient characteristics linked to changes in infection risk and costs, iii) expanded HAI control measures, and iv) stochastic and adaptive disease parameters to represent emerging and evolving diseases. Next, Specific Aim 2 will use our newly expanded RHEA framework to model a sample endemic pathogen, MRSA, and a sample emerging pathogen, CRE to identify optimal control strategies even when pathogen characteristics are evolving. Finally, Specific Aim 3 will involve developing a user-friendly interface for RHEA and deploying it as a healthcare ecosystem computational modeling tool that various stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, healthcare administrators, infection control specialists, funders, and product manufacturers) can readily use to make decisions regarding the control of healthcare-associated infections. Public Health Relevance Understanding and preventing the spread of healthcare-associated infectious diseases throughout hospitals and nursing homes is a national priority. Simulation models can serve as virtual laboratories to help identify best practice solutions for containing common [such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)] and emerging [e.g., carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE)] causes of healthcare associated infections (HAIs). Our goal is to develop our software RHEA (Regional Healthcare Ecosystem Analyst) into a computational modeling tool that can be used directly by decision makers to identify, develop, and evaluate strategies and interventions to reduce HAIs across a large geographic region.

Before the Backlash, Let’s Redefine User-Centered Design - Lee, Panthea (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2015)
We must better understand user-centered design’s limitations—not just its strengths—in the context of international development. And we must adapt it from its original uses designing commercial products to solving for social good.

Moving from Real-Time Data to Real-Time Programs - Lee, Panthea (Reboot, 2016)
How can we avoid drowning in data to actually make better decisions?
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Thinking and Working Politically: What does it mean, Why is it important and How do you do it? - Leftwich, Adrian (Politics, Leadership and Coalitions in Development: Policy Implications of the DLP Research Evidence, Research and Policy Workshop, 2011)
This paper suggests that working politically in a developmental context means directing attention and support to the agents of reform and development (leaders and organisations). This allows investment in the local processes that will resolve problems – such as problems of collective action – through the work of alliances and coalitions. Hence, it will drive the formation and consolidation of the locally appropriate, feasible and legitimate institutions that are most likely to advance development outcomes. The Developmental Leadership Program defines politics as the pervasive, unavoidable and necessary activities of conflict, negotiation and compromise involved in group decision-making about how resources are to be used, produced and distributed. Thinking politically means understanding that both political and technical dimensions are central to developmental outcomes. It also means: Understanding that ‘agency’ matters. That is, that people have the potential to change things, but always withhin the context of given institutional arrangements, which contain both constraints and opportunities. Leaders, organisations and followers think, strategise and attempt to resolve problems in different ways in the same contexts. Understanding leadership as a political process that mobilises people and resources in support of a goal: leaders seldom work on their own. Realising that overcoming collective action problems is a major challenge of development. Collective action problems occur when people with diverse (often competing) interests struggle to agree on an organisational arrangement from which they would all benefit. Understanding that coalitions (formal or informal) are a crucial political mechanism for the resolution of collective action problems. Paying attention to the detailed inner politics of regimes, sectors or issues (‘micro-politics’). This includes understanding who the players are, where they come from, their organisational affiliations, ideologies and interests and the political dynamics involved. (Many political analysis tools are inadequate for this level of detail.) Recognising that processes are as important as projects in development, and vary from context to context. Working politically in development means supporting, brokering, facilitating and aiding the emergence and practices of (public or private) developmental or reform leaderships, organisations, networks and coalitions at any level, and across all sectors. It means helping them to respond to, and work with, initiatives and requests from local individuals and groups. Working politically can also involve: Investing in the effectiveness of developmental coalitions by enhancing the political capacity of organisations in negotiation, advocacy, communication and the generation of constructive policy options. Rethinking higher educational support programmes so that they supplement a skills focus with strategies that help to build networks, and encourage the understanding of collective action problems and of the importance of providing public goods. Acquiring a deep and detailed knowledge of, and long-term exposure to, the country or issue concerned. Respectful and sensitive understanding of local political dynamics and cultural norms. Employing more social scientists and a well-trained, politically savvy workforce, both local and international, with the capacity to ‘read’ the politics. In particular, coalitions can help drive the endogenous politics of developmental reforms by: 1) achieving a specific policy goal; 2) opening up debate on a previously taboo issue; 3) deepening and strengthening the coalition’s internal organisation and relationships for future purposes; and 4) increasing the capacity of constituent organisations. It is also important to understand that: Developmental leaderships and coalitions often emerge in response to a critical juncture – a threat, challenge or danger – or a new opportunity. What matters is whether leaders have the knowledge, education, vision, prior experience and networks to seize such opportunities. The character and conditionality of funding by donors or supporters can make or break a coalition. Are tight conditions applied? Are funding arrangements transparent?

Scenario-based strategizing: Advancing the applicability in strategists' teams - Lehr, Thomas; Lorenz, Ullrich; Willert, Markus; Rohrbeck, René (Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2017)
For over 40years, scenarios have been promoted as a key technique for forming strategies in uncertain environments. However, many challenges remain. In this article, we discuss a novel approach designed to increase the applicability of scenario-based strategizing in top management teams. Drawing on behavioural strategy as a theoretical lens, we design a yardstick to study the impact of scenario-based strategizing. We then describe our approach, which includes developing scenarios and alternative strategies separately and supporting the strategy selection through an integrated assessment of the goal-based efficacy and robustness. To facilitate the collaborative strategizing in teams, we propose a matrix with robustness and efficacy as the two axes, which we call the Parmenides Matrix. We assess the impact of the novel approach by applying it in two cases, at a governmental agency (German Environmental Ministry) and a firm affected by disruptive change (Bosch, leading global supplier of technology and solutions).
Keywords: Behavioural strategy; Scenario-based strategizing; Scenarios; Strategic foresight; Uncertainty

Evaluating megaprojects: From the ‘iron triangle’ to network mapping - Lehtonen, Markku (Evaluation, 2014)
Evaluation literature has paid relatively little attention to the specific needs of evaluating large, complex industrial and infrastructure projects, often called ‘megaprojects’. The abundant megaproject governance literature, in turn, has largely focused on the so-called ‘megaproject pathologies’, i.e. the chronic budget overruns, and failure of such projects to keep to timetables and deliver the expected social and economic benefits. This article draws on these two strands of literature, identifies shortcomings, and suggests potential pathways towards an improved evaluation of megaprojects. To counterbalance the current overemphasis on relatively narrowly defined accountability as the main function of megaproject evaluation, and the narrow definition of project success in megaproject evaluation, the article argues that conceptualizing megaprojects as dynamic and evolving networks would provide a useful basis for the design of an evaluation approach better able to promote learning and to address the socio-economic aspects of megaprojects. A modified version of ‘network mapping’ is suggested as a possible framework for megaproject evaluation, with the exploration of the multiple accountability relationships as a central evaluation task, designed to reconcile learning and accountability as the central evaluation functions. The article highlights the role of evaluation as an ‘emergent’ property of spontaneous megaproject ‘governing’, and explores the challenges that this poses to the role of the evaluator.

Transforming governance: how can technology help reshape democracy? - Leighninger, Matt (Institute of Development Studies, 2016)
Around the world, people are asking how we can make democracy work in new and better ways. We are frustrated by political systems in which voting is the only legitimate political act, concerned that many republics don’t have the strength or appeal to withstand authoritarian figures, and disillusioned by the inability of many countries to address the fundamental challenges of health, education and economic development. If we want to create democracies in which citizens have meaningful roles in shaping public decisions and solving public problems, we should be asking a number of questions about civic tech, including: • How can online tools best support new forms of democracy? • What are the examples of how this has happened? • What are some variables to consider in comparing these examples? • How can we learn from each other as we move forward? This background note has been developed to help democratic innovators explore these questions and examine how their work can provide answers.

What Is This Thing Called a Mechanism? Findings From a Review of Realist Evaluations - Lemire, Sebastian; Kwako, Alexander; Nielsen, Steffen B.; Christie, Christina A.; Donaldson, Stewart I.; Leeuw, Frans L. (New Directions for Evaluation, 2020)
Realist evaluation has, over the past two decades, become a widely used approach in evaluation. The cornerstone of realist evaluation is to answer the question: What works, for whom, under what circumstances, and why. This is accomplished by explicating the causal mechanisms that, within a particular context, generate the outcomes of interest. Despite the central role of mechanisms in realist evaluation, systematic knowledge about how the term mechanism is conceptualized and operationalized is limited. The aim of the present chapter is to examine how mechanisms are defined and applied in realist evaluations. Informed by the findings of the review, further conceptual and practical developments for future applications of mechanisms in realist evaluation are considered.

Narrowing the climate information usability gap - Lemos, Maria Carmen; Kirchhoff, Christine J.; Ramprasad, Vijay (Nature Climate Change, 2012)
Climate-change-related risks pose serious threats to the management of a wide range of social, economic and ecological systems. Managing these risks requires knowledge-intensive adaptive management and policy-making actively informed by scientific knowledge, especially climate science1. However, potentially useful climate information often goes unused1,2. This suggests a gap between what scientists understand as useful information and what users recognize as usable in their decision-making. We propose a dynamic conceptual model to address this gap and highlight strategies to move information from useful to usable to reduce climate-related risks.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning - Lent, Jeremy (Prometheus Books, 2017)
This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society. Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, the author, an entrepreneur and sustainability leader, uses recent findings in cognitive science and systems theory to reveal the hidden layers of values that form today's cultural norms. Uprooting the tired cliches of the science-religion debate, he shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature. The author probes our current crisis of unsustainability and argues that it is not an inevitable result of human nature, but is culturally driven: a product of particular mental patterns that could conceivably be reshaped. By shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity: one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans, the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world. This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead.

Smart Risks: How small grants are helping to solve some of the world's biggest problems - Lentfer, Jennifer; Cothran, Tanya (Practical Action Publishing, 2017)
As never before, international aid is in the hands of ordinary people. Concerned citizens in wealthy countries are starting philanthropy groups, joining giving circles, and travelling internationally to lend support. Yet, they are torn between the feelings that 'something' must be done about global poverty and that foreign assistance is creating dependency and fueling corruption overseas.A growing community of international small grant-makers know how to find and fund effective grassroots initiatives. Compared to donor-controlled, large-scale, project-based international aid funding, small grant-makers use the concept of 'smart risks' to build upon existing human and social capital and to make a lasting changes in people's lives. Smart Risks brings together the wisdom of experts with wide-ranging experience within the development sector. Their contributions focus on five guiding question, such as 'who is a smart risk?' and 'what is your role in smart risks?' They include case studies, personal stories of lessons learned over time, provocative insights on power and privilege, and practical frameworks for choosing, investing in, and measuring the impact of grassroots organizations and movements. This book is essential reading for all those who wonder how their donations and work can make a difference in developing countries - from aid agency staff and policy makers, to globally engaged individuals.

Steering E-Government Projects from Failure to Success: Using Design-Reality Gap Analysis as a Mid-Implementation Assessment Tool - Lessa, Lemma; Negash, Solomon; Belachew, Mesfin (Emerging Issues and Prospects in African E-Government:, 2014)
There are many e-government failures in developing countries. Most studies look at these after the event (post hoc), but this chapter takes an original approach to look mid-implementation (durante hoc) in order to provide recommendations for improvement. The authors chose a partial failure/partial success land management information system being implemented in one Ethiopian city. The project has made retrieval of land information quicker and simpler but is only partly implemented, and is still—on occasion—circumvented by public servants for personal gain. They used design-reality gap framework to understand why the project had partly failed. The authors used the design-reality gap analysis to propose an action plan that would help institutionalise the system, steering it from partial failure to success. They demonstrate the value of this framework as a tool for mid-implementation analysis of e-government projects. The authors recommend its usage on other ongoing e-government projects in developing countries.

The landscape of innovation approaches - Leurs, Bas (States of Change, 2018)
An overview of innovation methods and approaches we’ve come across in government innovation practice.

Playbook for innovation learning. 35 diagrams to support talking and thinking about learning for innovation - Leurs, Bas; Roberts, Isobel (Nesta, 2018)

How Political Contexts Influence Education Systems: Patterns, Constraints, Entry Points - Levy, Brian (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2022)
This paper synthesises the findings of a set of country studies commissioned by the RISE Programme to explore the influence of politics and power on education sector policymaking and implementation. The synthesis groups the countries into three political-institutional contexts: - Dominant contexts, where power is centred around a political leader and a hierarchical governance structure. As the Vietnam case details, top-down leadership potentially can provide a robust platform for improving learning outcomes. However, as the case studies of Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Tanzania illustrate, all-too-often dominant leaders’ goals vis-à-vis the education sector can veer in other directions. - In impersonal competitive contexts, a combination of strong formal institutions and effective processes of resolving disagreements can, on occasion, result in a shared commitment among powerful interests to improve learning outcomes—but in none of the case studies is this outcome evident. In Peru, substantial learning gains have been achieved despite messy top-level politics. But the Chilean, Indian, and South African case studies suggest that the all-too-common result of rule-boundedness plus unresolved political contestation over the education sector’s goals is some combination of exaggerated rule compliance and/or performative isomorphic mimicry. - Personalised competitive contexts (Bangladesh, Ghana, and Kenya for example) lack the seeming strengths of either their dominant or their impersonal competitive contexts; there are multiple politically-influential groups and multiple, competing goals—but no credible framework of rules to bring coherence either to political competition or to the education bureaucracy. The case studies show that political and institutional constraints can render ineffective many specialised sectoral interventions intended to improve learning outcomes. But they also point to the possibility that ‘soft governance’ entry points might open up some context-aligned opportunities for improving learning outcomes. In dominant contexts, the focus might usefully be on trying to influence the goals and strategies of top-level leadership. In impersonal competitive contexts, it might be on strengthening alliances between mission-oriented public officials and other developmentally-oriented stakeholders. In personalised competitive contexts, gains are more likely to come from the bottom-up—via a combination of local-level initiatives plus a broader effort to inculcate a shared sense among a country’s citizenry of ‘all for education’.

The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer - Liker, Jeffrey K. (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industryIn factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability.Complete with profiles of organizations that have successfully adopted Toyota's principles, this book shows managers in every industry how to improve business processes by:Eliminating wasted time and resources Building quality into workplace systems Finding low-cost but reliable alternatives to expensive new technology Producing in small quantities Turning every employee into a quality control inspector

Reflections on the Utilization-Focused Evaluation (UFE) Process - Lim, Yvonne; Mizumoto, Ann (Strengthening ICTD Research Capacity in Asia (SIRCA) Programme, 2010)
This presentation from the Strengthening ICTD Research Capacity in Asia (SIRCA) provides an overview of how UFE was used in their SIRCA programme. It was presented at the Evaluation Conclave 2010, New Delhi, India The key objectives of the program are to: Enhance research capacity in Asia through rigorous academic research Create a space for dialogue on ICT4D social science research issues in Asia Create linkages through a mentorship program Disseminate findings in publications and conferences Contents SIRCA Programme SIRCA Key Objectives SIRCA Evaluation UFE Learnings UFE Challenges Evaluation is over…but there’s a lasting outcome...

Are unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) the future of wildlife monitoring? A review of accomplishments and challenges - Linchant, Julie; Lisein, Jonathan; Semeki, Jean; Lejeune, Philippe; Vermeulen, Cédric (Mammal Review, 2015)
Regular monitoring of animal populations must be established to ensure wildlife protection, especially when pressure on animals is high. The recent development of drones or unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) opens new opportunities. UASs have several advantages, including providing data at high spatial and temporal resolution, providing systematic, permanent data, having low operational costs and being low-risk for the operators. However, UASs have some constraints, such as short flight endurance. We reviewed studies in which wildlife populations were monitored by using drones, described accomplishments to date and evaluated the range of possibilities UASs offer to provide new perspectives in future research. We focused on four main topics: 1) the available systems and sensors; 2) the types of survey plan and detection possibilities; 3) contributions towards anti-poaching surveillance; and 4) legislation and ethics. We found that small fixed-wing UASs are most commonly used because these aircraft provide a viable compromise between price, logistics and flight endurance. The sensors are typically electro-optic or infrared cameras, but there is the potential to develop and test new sensors. Despite various flight plan possibilities, mostly classical line transects have been employed, and it would be of great interest to test new methods to adapt to the limitations of UASs. Detection of many species is possible, but statistical approaches are unavailable if valid inventories of large mammals are the purpose. Contributions of UASs to anti-poaching surveillance are not yet well documented in the scientific literature, but initial studies indicate that this approach could make important contributions to conservation in the next few years. Finally, we conclude that one of the main factors impeding the use of UASs is legislation. Restrictions in the use of airspace prevent researchers from testing all possibilities, and adaptations to the relevant legislation will be necessary in future.
Keywords: detection; drone; survey; wildlife