Adapting to Learn and Learning to Adapt: Practical Insights from International Development Projects

Abstract

Adaptive programming and management principles focused on learning, experimentation, and evidence-based decision making are gaining traction with donor agencies and implementing partners in international development. Adaptation calls for using learning to inform adjustments during project implementation. This requires information gathering methods that promote reflection, learning, and adaption, beyond reporting on pre-specified data. A focus on adaptation changes traditional thinking about program cycle. It both erases the boundaries between design, implementation, and evaluation and reframes thinking to consider the complexity of development problems and nonlinear change pathways.Supportive management structures and processes are crucial for fostering adaptive management. Implementers and donors are experimenting with how procurement, contracting, work planning, and reporting can be modified to foster adaptive programming. Well-designed monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems can go beyond meeting accountability and reporting requirements to produce data and learning for evidence-based decision making and adaptive management. It is important to continue experimenting and learning to integrate adaptive programming and management into the operational policies and practices of donor agencies, country partners, and implementers. We need to devote ongoing effort to build the evidence base for the contributions of adaptive management to achieving international development results.

Thinking and Working Politically: Lessons from Diverse and Inclusive Applied Political Economy Analysis

“…1,3 The problemspecific orientation connected PEAs more closely with identifying individual project bottlenecks and constraints and with supporting project learning and adaptive management to cope with those constraints. 4 Currently, donors and practitioners use both generations of PEA approaches and tools, though the labels they use vary and can contribute to the confusion we noted in the Introduction. The US Agency for International Development, for example, refers to Baseline PEAs as an analysis at the country, sector, subsector, or project level depending on the needs of the mission and team.…”

Thinking and Working Politically: Learning from practice. Overview to Special Issue

“…Finally, the case studies confirm an uncomfortable lesson that funders tend to ignore, though noted in the literature (Brinkerhoff, Frazer, & McGregor-Mirghani, 2018), that the political economy of donor agencies themselves influences the chances of a TWP programme succeeding. The Nigerian and OPTs programmes depended on DFID being willing to operate differently throughout.…”

“…This distance also puts implementing organizations in a difficult position since they must try to fulfil the requirements of their funders, while at the same time being seen to be somewhat independent of them. To make this work, significant trust is required by the funder in the implementing organization, enabling it to experiment and explore different approaches (Brinkerhoff et al., ).…”

Knowledge Systems: Evidence to Policy Concepts in Practice

“…Rather than the traditional project management model of predict-implementcontrol, 11 knowledge-to-policy models apply adaptive management principles that emphasize iterative trial-and-error approaches. 12 Integrating a systems perspective leads practitioners to focus not simply on the capacities, interests, and roles of the actors in the knowledge system but on the linkages and interactions among them. Evidence for the value and contribution of knowledge to socioeconomic progress and effective policy making has grown (see, for example, Kaur and Singh 13 ).…”