Info: Join us for an AEA Coffee Break conversation, featuring an upcoming pre-conference workshop taking place at Eval 23 in Indianapolis, Indiana. In this session, you will hear about the topic from the presenter and have the opportunity ask the presenter a question before heading out to Eval 23. You can find registration information for pre-conference workshops here:
https://www.evaluationconference.org/Registration/Registration-2023

Description:
Most evaluators and project managers are quite frequently facing these two challenges while implementing, and/or, evaluating projects:
- Stakeholders are not impressed by the projects metrics, even when they show good progress - they do not really understand the metrics and, with very few exceptions, they don’t ask for clarifications. We have heard project people saying, “our stakeholders do not understand project’s metrics!”, while our attitude was always “they do not have to, instead we have to speak a language they understand!”
- Project outcomes and impact may not be clear from the start of the project, meaning that a “traditional” linear approach would not provide the best results. One would achieve better results implementing a project following the Agile project management approach. Quite often, in order to be able to make the right management decisions, one requires a certain degree of flexibility along with access to relevant data, usually obtainable by means of relevant technology.
Based on three case studies, we will train the audience on how to implement the Agile approach, by following a step by step process, and by using an automated online data management system, which we have previously used to obtain the relevant impact data that can be used in tailored success stories. Following a well-targeted impact-based advocacy campaign, the program partners received a 25% budget increase from their legal funder, while 82% of them reported an “increased improvement” in their cooperation stakeholders over the program’s duration. This appears to be rather successful storytelling!

More than that, the International Federation of Libraries Association, IFLA, used one of these case studies in their database of examples on how public libraries helped farmers access to agricultural subsidies and how the public libraries are contributing to reach the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals https://librarymap.ifla.org/stories/Romania/PUBLIC-LIBRARIES-IN-ROMANIA-FACILITATE-ACCESS-TO-AGRICULTURAL-SUBSIDIES/21

The workshop is focused on three key topics, very important for evaluators and project managers:
- Impact – donors as well as the non-profits/International Development sector are increasingly interested in understanding the real life changes following their investment, how their projects/programs are aligned with their strategies and even how their successful implementation could create synergies with other initiatives
- Successful advocacy – can be the key ingredient to smooth many communication channels and to open many doors. Being able to translate projects’ metrics into an easy to understand message for stakeholders is very important for any successful advocacy strategy. Storytelling around successful impact cases can be one of the variables to be included in such a strategy as a possible game changer.
- Agile project management – in this period with high volatility, and constraints, being Agile could be vital for any evaluator working with project implementation organizations, and for the ones working as external evaluators. We will detail how the technology integration changed everything and helped the Agile project management implementation.


Learning Outcomes:

• The participants will learn different approaches to measure project’s impact.
• The participants will be able to use their impact data in innovative ways to create success stories.
• The participants will understand how to plan and implement agile project management techniques in volatile environment using technology.

This workshop is aligned to AEA’s Competencies and Guiding Principles as follows:
The workshop will present three case studies: two from Global Libraries Program, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and one from a World Bank project evaluation. Starting from dry libraries statistics, or economic statistics, and employing Agile project management methods, we succeeded to measure the impact of the intervention and to turn it into success stories. By processing impact data in a friendly and easy to understand by the stakeholders, we efficiently delivered the message to the audience. In the case of the World Bank project, we just made a lateral step to express the impact in terms that are relevant for the National Government, rather than only answering the evaluation questions.
The proposal is focused on some key themes in today’s evaluation work:
- Impact – donors as well as the non-profits/International Development sector are increasingly interested in understanding the real life changes following their investment, how their projects/programs are aligned with their strategies and even how their successful implementation could create synergies with other initiatives
- Successful advocacy – can be the key ingredient to smooth many communication channels and to open many doors. Being able to translate projects’ metrics into an easy to understand message for stakeholders is very important for any successful advocacy strategy. Storytelling around successful impact cases can be one of the variables to be included in such a strategy as a possible game changer.
- Agile project management – in this period with high volatility, and constraints, being Agile could be vital for any evaluator working with project implementation organizations, and for the ones working as external evaluators. Economic uncertainty, climate crisis, Ukraine war, are some of the variables influencing the whole world today. Being able to quickly analyze the influence of the external factors, to decide what to do, and to implement the right measures in the shortest possible time is very important in managing and evaluating projects. . We will detail how the technology integration changed everything and helped the Agile project management implementation.
The workshop starts with three case studies, highlighting the challenges in measuring the impact, and in designing an efficient advocacy campaign which would make a difference in advocating and in presenting success stories. Later we will introduce the Agile project management steps we performed to determine the relevant impact data. In this process, we have used an automated online data collection, processing and visualization platform, which allowed us to collect and analyze the necessary big data to understand where and how to look for the impact. After obtaining the relevant data to prove the intervention’s impact, we are going to detail how we processed the impact data to be presented in a friendly format to the stakeholders and how this became a success story. Everything to be present in a practical manner, with checklists to be used and key points to follow during implementation. In this way, any participant will be able to extract what is useful for his or her own work.

Presenters:
Marcel Chiranov, PMP
Monitoring, Evaluation, Research & Learning Lead
IJM

Date:
September 27, 11:30 AM - 12:00 PM ET

Note:
Once you purchase the eStudy you must register for each session. Recordings will be made available to registrants unable to attend sessions live. Recordings will be made available to all registrants for 90 days.