From Chris Lysy at Fresh Spectrum https://freshspectrum.com/the-you-sir-data-interface/ For many programmes, running an impact assessment is like going to the doctor for an embarrassing medical condition. A patient with such a condition may prefer not to think about the issue until the last moment. Eventually the pain is too much to ignore, so the patient looks for the cheapest and quickest solution available. They get a cursory inspection from the doctor, try to ignore any bad news that comes out of…

I’ve started recording videos for our upcoming training course on how to measure results for adaptively managed programmes. While I absolutely hate the sound of my own voice – all the more so now I’ve listened to it non-stop for two hours – I’m reasonably satisfied with this simple explanation of why we need adaptive management in the first place. If you have any comments or feedback, please let me know! And if you’re interested in signing up, we still…

Following the road blindly can mean you end up in completely the wrong destination… A version of this blog was originally written for a proposal, which due to a catastrophic email failure never made it to the intended recipient’s mailbox. In the spirit of adaptive management, therefore, it has been reused for a completely different purpose… The puzzle of adaptive management is that it is so intuitively useful, yet so infrequently implemented. Take USAID’s definition of adaptive management: “an intentional…

We are seeking to find a junior consultant who can help us grow our business. This is a short-term, part-time role where we expect the consultant to focus on proposal writing. In the long run, there may be an opportunity to be recruited as a full-time employee or as a consultant on specific projects. The terms of reference can be downloaded here. Please get in touch if you’re interested, or pass it round your networks.

Beautiful, right? Well worth the minute I spent googling it. From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple_random_sampling.PNG I just googled the above question, and found nothing but a sea of confusion, proprietry software and (to me) incomprehensible macros. A bit more thinking and research came up with a fairly simple answer, so I wanted to document it here for any other lost excel-loving M&E professional. I assume a knowledge of all the functions I mention below – if you don’t understand them google or email…

Job creation is often seen as a major measurement challenge. There are many suggested reasons for this. Some people complain that jobs are hard to define. Others worry that they’re hard to measure. But the real reason why measurement is challenging is simple; most development programmes don’t create jobs, and it’s very hard to measure what isn’t there.  But were they attributable jobs? The reason is that most private sector development programmes bring about incremental change. A successful programme might…

This blog was originally published on the Beam Exchange here. Adaptive management has increasingly become an area of interest for development practitioners. This has led to a strong demand for simple processes and tools to foster continual learning and evidence-based decision making. As market systems programmes work in a rapidly changing environment, organisations need to set up systems which allows decisions to be made in real time. Enterprise Partners (EP) is a DFID funded project based in Ethiopia (duration: 2013…