While the five 'Top Ten Tips' in my previous post for Young and Emerging Evaluators (YEEs) related more to overall approaches to evaluation practice, the next five are intended to zoom in on a few technical matters that, as I advise people and organisations around the world, I
"Aid projects might yield satisfying micro-results, but they generally do little to change the systems that produce the problems in the first place." On 16 July 2018 fifteen prominent economists, including three Nobel winners, wrote in the Guardian that - my summary - the aid system is broken because
Given my 17-year long experience in evaluation, what are the top tips I would give to Young and Emerging Evaluators - the YEEs who will be responsible in future for the commissioning and doing of evaluations? We need change in our evaluation systems, so here are my first five priorities
Can evaluation help enable and support transformative development? We know we need the latter. Yet like sustainability, transformation (or transformative change) and transformative development are these days frequently dismissed as 'buzzwords' (or even worse, as 'fuzzwords'). This is a very big mistake. These are extremely important
Many years ago, at the beginning of my evaluation career, I read about 'dialogue evaluation'. It is a simple mechanism that we can use more frequently to mediate between an independent evaluation and self-evaluation - two distinct approaches that many see as incompatible. Dialogue evaluation (see below) can
Evaluators' power and influence are limited. There are several reasons for this situation. One relates to how our craft is framed. We are used to 'selling' evaluation/M&E as serving accountability, decision-making, learning and knowledge generation. Yet evaluation is still frequently perceived as something
Definitions of terms are crucial for common understanding in any field of human endeavour. The diversity of actors entering and playing on the evaluation field is both an advantage and a disadvantage - including in the fact that we do not have a common language. It is both frustrating and enriching
How good are we at defining and judging 'success' - the essence of what evaluators do? Let us consider a pertinent example: Every year the aid industry spends a quarter of its funding, around US$15 billion, on 'capacity development' (CD). So-called 'state-building'
Evaluation criteria used in development contexts do not only show what evaluation commissioners, evaluators and other stakeholders value. They also provide an indication of the issues that could - and likely should - be a focus in the design and implementation of development interventions (i.e., projects, programmes, policies, events, relationships such
In my previous post I started to make the case for the evaluation of transformative change and transformative development in a way that recognises the differences between what we call the Global South and Global North, and that then shapes our practice accordingly - including our evaluation questions and criteria. Viewing
