Hi Mia
I hope this doesn't sound too jargony, and is useful for everyone.
Theory of Change is a fairly rigorous method, with elements which will
be very familiar to most of you. It encourages organisations to take a
big picture and long term view, and to challenge your shared assumptions.
It assumes that any project is intended to promote positive change
within /and/ outside the organisation (otherwise, why do the project?).
It encourages you to be very specific and measurable, to create a very
graphic representation of change, which can be pictured as a causal
pathway. It helps you describe the interventions that are needed to
optimise this causal pathway.
What I find helpful is that if an organisation takes on board Theory of
Change, evaluation isn't just 'tacked on' at the end. Evaluation is the
process of describing and appraising all the interventions and the
outputs on the full length of this causal pathway.
Bridget
On 07/06/2012 13:53, Mia wrote:
> On 6 Jun 2012, at 14:07, Mike Ellis<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I don't know how or whether we can solve this but ideally there would be a capital budget and then a project iteration budget as well as an operating budget. Oh, and a gin and tonic budget too...
> Including a post-launch community management budget...
>
> IMHO, digital projects should always have more front-end and formative evaluation than summative. Even then, if you're doing testing without the ability to make changes in response then you're wasting your time and money - a depressing thought when many projects don't have timelines or flexible outcomes to allow this, and aren't able to share what they've learnt about what didn't work as well as what did.
>
> On that note, I'm curious about the institutional and personal reasons people find it difficult to share less than completely positive results, whether from iterative or summative evaluation. Any thoughts?
>
> Bridget's summary of the problems with summative evaluation seemed pretty definitive to me, but I'd love to know more about the 'Theory of Change'.
>
> Cheers, Mia
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