Applied political economy analysis for human rights programs and campaigns: A guide for practitioners (second edition) - Pact (Pact, 2023)
This updated guide provides practical guidance to practitioners in the human rights sector and beyond on how to integrate Applied Political Economy Analysis

Appendix 3. ToC Examples - Vogel, Isabel; Stephenson, Zoe (DFID, 2012)

Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho - Ferguson, James (University Of Minnesota Press, 1994)
Development, it is generally assumed, is good and necessary, and in its name the West has intervened, implementing all manner of projects in the impoverished regions of the world. When these projects fail, as they do with astonishing regularity, they nonetheless produce a host of regular and unacknowledged effects, including the expansion of bureaucratic state power and the translation of the political realities of poverty and powerlessness into "technical" problems awaiting solution by "development" agencies and experts. It is the political intelligibility of these effects, along with the process that produces them, that this book seeks to illuminate through a detailed case study of the workings of the "development" industry in one country, Lesotho, and in one "development" project.Using an anthropological approach grounded in the work of Foucault, James Ferguson analyzes the institutional framework within which such projects are crafted and the nature of "development discourse," revealing how it is that, despite all the "expertise" that goes into formulating development projects, they nonetheless often demonstrate a startling ignorance of the historical and political realities of the locale they are intended to help. In a close examination of the attempted implementation of the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho, Ferguson shows how such a misguided approach plays out, how, in fact, the "development" apparatus in Lesotho acts as an "anti-politics machine," everywhere whisking political realities out of sight and all the while performing, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of strengthening the state presence in the local region.James Ferguson is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine.

Announcement of CLA Learning Network Launch - Lab, Learning (USAID Learning Lab, 2016)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL), together with the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment’s localworks program, is pleased to announce the launch of a Learning Network focused on building the evidence base for Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA).

Anatomy of Social Accountability 3.0: A working framework for moving forward - Guerzovich, Florencia; Aston, Tom (Florianopolis, SC, Brazil: Grupo Politeia, ESAG, University of the State of Santa Catarina and act4delivery, 2023)
This note presents the key components of a potential next generation of social accountability programming. The key aspects outlined emerge from a review of over 150 cases as well as tacit knowledge from dozens of practitioners (Guerzovich and Aston, 2023).The main thread of social accountability 3.0 and what distinguishes it from previous generations is a focus on its contribution towards more responsive systems and accountable social contracts. In particular, social accountability should be considered as an operational means to rework social contracts.Over the last two decades, the field has been defined by a supposed dichotomy between minimalist (i.e., “widget” based) approach or a maximalist (“go big or go home”) approaches. Yet, most practice sits somewhere between these extremes. The paper presents various options derived from practice; practitioners should choose whichever best fits their own particular circumstances.Those hoping to improve and expand their practice with a systems-lens may benefit from considering how they approach the key elements of social accountability 3.0.
Keywords: accountability; development; responsiveness; social accountability; social contract; systems

Analysis of the factors affecting the sustainability of ICT4D initiatives - Marais, Mario (IDIA2011 Conference Proceedings, 2011)

Analysing ICT and Development from the Perspective of the Capabilities Approach: A Study in South Brazil - Coelho, Taiane Ritta; Segatto, Andréa Paula; Frega, José Roberto (The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2015)
Certain international agencies propose that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) allows development to be reached more efficiently and quickly. While there are success stories galore, there is acknowledgement of not all investments in ICT bringing positive effects towards development. Following the Capabilities Approach, this paper discusses how the use of ICT can promote a more effective development by studying the case of Sudotec (association for technological and industrial development), a non-profit organization that saw in ICT the opportunity to change the local scenario. The results revealed positive effects of the use of ICT in social, economical and cultural spheres, but not presenting political effect.

An Upside Down View of Governance - IDS (Centre for the Future State, IDS, 2010)
Informal institutions and personalised relationships are usually seen as governance problems. However the research presented in this synthesis paper suggests that they can also be part of the solution...

An Upside Down View of Governance - Unsworth, Sue (Institute of Development Studies, 2010)
Informal institutions and personalised relationships are usually seen as governance problems. However the research presented in this synthesis paper suggests that they can also be part of the solution...

An inventory and review of countering violent extremism and insurgency monitoring systems - Carter, Lynn; Phyllis, Dinino (USAID, 2012)

An introductory systems thinking toolkit for civil servants - UK Government (UK Government Office for Science, 2022)
This document is a an Introductory Toolkit for for civil servants. It is one component of a suite of documents that aims to act as a springboard into systems thinking for civil servants unfamiliar with this approach. These documents introduce a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, but which is by no means comprehensive. They are intended to act as a first step towards using systems thinking approaches to solve complex problems and the reader is encourage to explore the wider systems thinking field further.

An introduction to the Learning Architecture - HLA (Humanitarian Leadership Academy, 2017)
The Learning Architecture is built on a flexible Learning Methodology and provides principles, technologies and behaviours of Scaffolded Social Learning.

An Introduction to the DCED Standard for Results Measurement - Bekkers, Nabanita Sen (2018)
Introduction used in the DCED-BEAM seminar

An introduction to systems thinking and tools for systems thinking - Allen, Will; Kilvington, Margaret (Learning fro Sustainability, 2018)
Systems thinking is an approach to integration that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when isolated from the system’s environment or other parts of the system. THIS PAGE PROVIDES PLENTY OF RESOURCES ON SYSTEM THINKING

An introduction to multi-stakeholder partnerships - Stibbe, Darian; Prescott, Dave (The Partnering Initiative, 2016)
This briefing document for the GPEDC High Level Meeting in November 2016 offers a definition of multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) and shows how they are being used, where they have come from, and what the different sectors bring to the table. It provides an overview of the challenges the present, what they require from individuals and organisations, and how they get started. The report was written with the support of the PEP Initiative, and funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

An Introduction to Adaptive Management for Threatened and Endangered Species - Runge, Michael C. (Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management, 2011)
Management of threatened and endangered species would seem to be a perfect context for adaptive management. Many of the decisions are recurrent and plagued by uncertainty, exactly the conditions that warrant an adaptive approach. But although the potential of adaptive management in these settings has been extolled, there are limited applications in practice. The impediments to practical implementation are manifold and include semantic confusion, institutional inertia, misperceptions about the suitability and utility, and a lack of guiding examples. In this special section of the Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management, we hope to reinvigorate the appropriate application of adaptive management for threatened and endangered species by framing such management in a decision-analytical context, clarifying misperceptions, classifying the types of decisions that might be amenable to an adaptive approach, and providing three fully developed case studies. In this overview paper, I define terms, review the past application of adaptive management, challenge perceived hurdles, and set the stage for the case studies which follow.

An analysis of what CLA looks like in Development Programming - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)

An analysis of factors influencing success of ICT4D projects: a case study of the Schools Computerisation Programme in Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe. - Musiyandaka, Donna; Ranga, Gideon; Kiwa, Jacqueline Fungai (The Journal of Community Informatics, 2013)
Keywords: ICT4D programmes; success factors

An Adaptive Capacity Guide Book: assessing, building and evaluating the capacity of communities to adapt in a changing climate - Jacobs, B.; Nelson, R.; Kuruppu, N.; Leith, P. (University of Technology and University of Tasmania, 2015)
A capacity to adapt to change is essential for managing Australia’s natural resources. The individuals, communities and organisations who manage our natural resources all have an innate capacity to adapt to change. Changes in climate, markets and technology have shaped the way we adapt the management of natural resources in urban, rural and coastal landscapes. Some of these changes are predictable and easy to manage. Others are expected, but their timing and magnitude are uncertain. Whatever the future holds, this guide can be used to build our capacity to meet future change with confidence.

America’s Most Successful Export to Japan: Continuous Improvement Programs - Dean M., Schroeder; Robinson, Alan G. (MIT Sloan Management Review, 1991)
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT Programs (CIPs) unleash employee experience and I creativity to improve both products and processes. They are often cited as the most important difference between the Japanese and Western management styles and as a major factor in Japan’s economic success.2Yet the CIP was conceived, developed, and brought to maturation in the United States. After World War II, the U.S. government helped to export it to Japan, where it was well received and promptly flourished. Despite the long history and well-documented benefits of such systems, few U.S. companies have invested effort in CIPs equivalent to that of their Japanese competitors. Japanese companies have put almost forty years into the development and refinement of CIPs, or kaizen programs as they are known in Japan, and have brought the art and science of managing them to new levels of sophistication. The aim of these programs is precisely to design and implement a system whose natural equilibrium is constant improvement and change. How can a company that does not have such a program compete with one that does? In this paper we give the historical background of CIPs, which we believe is essential for a useful understanding of these programs. We document their export across the Pacific immediately following World War II and illustrate their power as a competitive weapon when fully and properly deployed. We then identify and discuss requirements for successful implementation and suggest reasons why many U.S. firms find them difficult to start and maintain. We conclude by arguing that what is commonly perceived to be the “best practice” of CIP management is itself open to improvement. Throughout the article, we identify promising directions for companies to pursue so that all minds in the company, not just those of a few at the top, are actively solving problems, reducing costs, and eliminating waste.

Amateur hour: CfC's 'surprising' success in addressing school congestion in the philippines - Sidel, John T. (Asia Foundation, 2017)
The international development community has increasingly embraced the idea that finding durable solutions to complex development problems requires new ways of working that move beyond industry norms. This paper makes an important contribution to the current debate by outlining an innovative monitoring system called Strategy Testing (ST). This is the third paper in the Working Politically in Practice paper series, launched together with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

ALPS in action: a review of the shift in ActionAid towards a new Accountability, Learning and Planning System | Participatory Methods - Guijt, Irene (2004)

Alps - Accountability, Learning and Planning System - 2011 Update - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2011)
Alps is ActionAid’s over arching accountability framework, containing within it our programme planning system. Alps is distinctive in that it is strongly driven by principles, and sets out necessary personal attitudes and behaviours alongside organisational processes for planning, strategy formulation, learning, monitoring reviews/evaluations and audit. Alps defines our standards, not only about what we do but also how we do it. Alps is part of ActionAid’s human rights-based work.

Alps - Accountability, Learning and Planning System - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2006)
Alps is ActionAid’s over arching accountability framework, containing within it our programme planning system. Alps is distinctive in that it is strongly driven by principles, and sets out necessary personal attitudes and behaviours alongside organisational processes for planning, strategy formulation, learning, monitoring reviews/evaluations and audit. Alps defines our standards, not only about what we do but also how we do it. Alps is part of ActionAid’s human rights-based work.

ALL - The question of inclusiveness in ICT-mediated citizen engagement - Berdou, Evangelia (MAVC, 2014)

All about behaviour: KAPE, Adaptation and ' Sticky' Institutional Change - Power, Greg (Global Partners Governance, 2016)
This paper describes Global Partners Governance’s (GPG’s) approach to institutional reform and political change. Developed over the last decade of working in some of the most complex and sensitive political environments with politicians and officials in parliaments, political parties, ministries and local government, it describes the KAPE® (knowledge-application-practice-effect) methodology that we adopt to get ‘sticky’ institutional and behavioural change. Contents 1) Two dimensions of ‘adaptive programmes’: Flexible delivery and getting behaviour change 2) Enabling Change: KAPE and The Logic of Institutional Reform (Knowledge-Application-Practice-Effect) - K: Knowledge – Defining the problem and what to do about it - A: Application – Making Systems Work in Practice - P: Practice – Pockets of good practice and establishing ‘the new normal’ - E: Effect – Improved performance and the ‘Ripple Effect’ 3) Measuring Impact: Monitoring and Evolving 4) Conclusion: Behavioural insights, adaptive management and sticky change

Alignment at Scale - Kniberg, Henrik (2016)

Aiming at the Wrong Targets: The Domestic Consequences of International Efforts to Build Institutions - Buntaine, Mark T.; Parks, Bradley C.; Buch, Benjamin P. (International Studies Quarterly, 2017)
We explain why international development organizations have had so little success building and reforming public sector institutions in developing countries. They often fail despite their apparently strong commitment to achieving measurable results and extraordinary amounts of time, money, and effort. We demonstrate that, when donors and lenders make access to financing contingent upon achievement of performance targets, recipient countries tend to choose easy and shallow institutional targets. These targets measure the organization of public sector institutions, rather than their effectiveness at addressing public problems. Such targets provide countries with low-cost opportunities to signal commitment to institution-building to international development organizations. We demonstrate the explanatory and predictive power of our argument in the context of a sector of World Bank lending—environment and natural resource management—that focuses heavily on improving public sector institutions.

Aiding Institutional Reform in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Philippines on what works, what doesn't and why - Booth, David (The Asia Foundation, 2014)

AID Programming Guide - DFAT (Australian Government, 2019)

Aid on the Edge of Chaos: Rethinking International Cooperation in a Complex World - Ramalingam, Ben (Oxford University Press, 2014)
It is widely recognised that the foreign aid system - of which every country in the world is a part - is in need of drastic overhaul. There are conflicting opinions as to what should be done. Some call for dramatic increases to achieve longstanding promises. Others bang the drum for cutting it altogether, and suggest putting the fate of poor and vulnerable people in the hands of markets or business. A few argue that what is needed is creative, innovative transformation. The arguments in Aid on the Edge of Chaos are firmly in the third of these categories. In this ground-breaking book, Ben Ramalingam shows that the linear, mechanistic models and assumptions that foreign aid is built on are more at home in early twentieth century industry than in the dynamic, complex world we face today. The reality is that economies and societies are less like machines and more like ecosystems. Aid on the Edge of Chaos explores how thinkers and practitioners in economics, business, and public policy have started to embrace new, ecologically literate approaches to thinking and acting, informed by the ideas of complex adaptive systems research. It showcases insights, experiences, and dramatic results of a growing network of practitioners, researchers, and policy makers who are applying a complexity-informed approach to aid challenges. From transforming approaches to child malnutrition, to rethinking process of macroeconomic growth, from rural Vietnam to urban Columbia, Aid on the Edge of Chaos shows how embracing the ideas of complex systems thinking can help make foreign aid more relevant, more appropriate, more innovative, and more catalytic. It argues that taking on these ideas will be a vital part of the transformation of aid, from a post-WW2 mechanism of resource transfer, to a truly innovative and dynamic form of global cooperation fit for the twenty-first century.

Agility and Evolution. How Mercy Corps Adapts at the Organizational Level - Mercy Corps (2017)
How Mercy Corps Adapts at the Organizational Level

Agile – where are we at? - Kniberg, Henrik (2017)

Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking - Gothelf, Jeff (Medium, 2016)
There’s an unforgettable scene in my favorite movie, Goodfellas, where Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta pay a late night visit to…

Agile Software Development: Adaptive Systems Principles and Best Practices - Meso, Peter; Jain, Radhika (Information Systems Management, 2006)
Today's environments of increasing business change require software development methodologies that are more adaptable. This article examines how complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory can be used to increase our understanding of how agile software development practices can be used to develop this capability. A mapping of agile practices to CAS principles and three dimensions (product, process, and people) results in several recommendations for “best practices” in systems development.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Agile Project Management For Dummies - Layton, Mark C. (John Wiley & Sons, 2012)
Be flexible and faster with Agile project management As mobile and web technologies continue to evolve rapidly, there is added pressure to develop and implement software projects in weeks instead of months. Agile Project Management For Dummies can make that happen. This is the first book to provide a simple, step–by–step guide to Agile Project Management approaches, tools, and techniques. With the fast pace of mobile and web technology development, software project development must keep pace; Agile Project Management enables developers to complete and implement projects more quickly and this book shows you how. Offers a practical context for understanding and applying Agile techniques, moving from theory into actual practice Explains when to use Agile and how to avoid common pitfalls Written by experts who know how to apply the principles in real–world situations Agile Project Management For Dummies enables you to understand and apply Agile principles for faster, more accurate development.

Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products - Highsmith, Jim (Addison Wesley, 2009)
Best practices for managing projects in agile environments―now updated with new techniques for larger projectsToday, the pace of project management moves faster. Project management needs to become more flexible and far more responsive to customers. Using Agile Project Management (APM), project managers can achieve all these goals without compromising value, quality, or business discipline. In Agile Project Management, Second Edition, renowned agile pioneer Jim Highsmith thoroughly updates his classic guide to APM, extending and refining it to support even the largest projects and organizations. Writing for project leaders, managers, and executives at all levels, Highsmith integrates the best project management, product management, and software development practices into an overall framework designed to support unprecedented speed and mobility. The many topics added in this new edition include incorporating agile values, scaling agile projects, release planning, portfolio governance, and enhancing organizational agility. Project and business leaders will especially appreciate Highsmith’s new coverage of promoting agility through performance measurements based on value, quality, and constraints. This edition’s coverage includes: Understanding the agile revolution’s impact on product development Recognizing when agile methods will work in project management, and when they won’t Setting realistic business objectives for Agile Project Management Promoting agile values and principles across the organizationUtilizing a proven Agile Enterprise Framework that encompasses governance, project and iteration management, and technical practicesOptimizing all five stages of the agile project: Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, and CloseOrganizational and product-related processes for scaling agile to the largest projects and teamsAgile project governance solutions for executives and management The “Agile Triangle”: measuring performance in ways that encourage agility instead of discouraging itThe changing role of the agile project leader

Agile on steroids through the RenDanHeYi - Quintarelli, Emanuele (Boundaryless, 2023)
This article offers initial insights into the overlap, positioning, shared values, and convergences between RenDanHeYi compared to agile practices.

Agile Metrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Wolpers, Stefan (dzone.com, 2017)
Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization.

Agile, is it just a delivery mechanism? - Carignan, Louis-Philippe (Scrum.org Community Blog, 2014)
As a Agile coach, I refer to a few tools to help me think about where my Scrum teams should go next on their path to Agility. One of these tools is the Agile subway map, a list of Agile practices grouped in different categories. It helps me think how a specific practice could help …

Agile Glossary and Terminology - Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance, 2015)
Learn the unique terminology used in Agile development from the experts at Agile Alliance.

Agile distributed software development in nine Central European teams: challenges, benefits and recommendations - Stadler, Manuel; Vallon, Raoul; Pazderka, Martin; Grechenig, Thomas (Information Technology, 2019)

Agile Development in the Age of Adaptive Management - Davis, Taryn; Orton-Vipond, Sarah; Staid, Martha (Development Gateway, 2019)
Adaptive management – the idea that development projects should respond to real life complexities and be flexible enough to respond to unforeseen changes – is an often-praised approach to doing development differently, with donors and partners exploring how to apply it within their programming.

Agile: A New Way of Governing - Mergel, Ines; Ganapati, Sukumar; Whitford, Andrew B. (Public Administration Review, 2021)
The evolving concept of “agile” has fundamentally changed core aspects of software design, project management, and business operations. The agile approach could also reshape government, public management, and governance in general. In this Viewpoint essay, the authors introduce the modern agile movement, reflect on how it can benefit public administrators, and describe several challenges that managers will face when they are expected to make their organizations more flexible and responsive.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/puar.13202

Agency in the face of path dependence: how organizations can regain scope for maneuver - Fortwengel, Johann; Keller, Arne (Business Research, 2020)
This paper tackles a key problem in path dependence research: how can locked-in organizations regain their scope for maneuver? Leveraging insights from two surprising and thus revelatory cases of organizations that have successfully escaped from path dependence, we develop the theoretical argument that regaining scope for maneuver can be achieved by interrupting the logic of a path’s underlying self-reinforcing mechanisms. More specifically, we argue that, through a targeted interruption of the working of these mechanisms, hyper-stable patterns inscribed in an organization can be gradually rewound—and alternative futures become possible. We position our paper within larger debates around the role of agency in path dependence theorizing, and we outline research frontiers to better understand the necessary antecedents of and exact relationship between mechanisms interruption and pattern unwinding.

Afterword: Alabert Hirschman observed - Alacevich, Michele (Development Projects Observed, 2015)
Albert Hirschman considered Development Projects Observed a natural sequel to his earlier work. As Hirschman put it to an old acquaintance at the World Bank, his previous books identified the inner and often hidden mechanisms of development sequences: “Having worked out a few basic hypotheses …, I could perhaps test them (and hit on some new ones) by looking at Bank-financed projects that have had enough time to give rise to such sequences.”¹ But as much as it appeared as the logical evolution of Hirschman’s intellectual trajectory, this new research was also the offshoot of an important crisis in development

Affordances Explained - Scarantino, Andrea (Philosophy of Science, 2003)
I examine the central theoretical construct of ecological psychology, the concept of an affordance. In the first part of the paper, I illustrate the role affordances play in Gibson's theory of perception. In the second part, I argue that affordances are to be understood as dispositional properties, and explain what I take to be their characteristic background circumstances, triggering circumstances and manifestations. The main purpose of my analysis is to give affordances a theoretical identity enriched by Gibson's visionary insight, but independent of the most controversial claims of the Gibsonian movement.

Advancing Work with the Grain at USAID - Jacobstein, David (USAID Learning Lab, 2018)
In December 2017, I wrote a blog about some of the insights gained during a workshop on Context-Driven Adaptation, where many of our sharpest field officers shared the ways that they assessed and adapted to shifts in context to keep programming relevant and effective.

Advancing urban adaptation where it counts: reshaping unequal knowledge and resource diffusion in networked Indonesian cities - Geldin, Samuel (Environment and Urbanization, 2019)
Climate adaptation literature vocalizes the need for transnational municipal networks (TMNs) to expand activities in vulnerable medium-sized cities, but little work has examined the granular extent of city participation and processes constraining TMN growth. This study explores the effectiveness of TMNs in reaching adaptation outcomes and how financial, material, and knowledge exchanges of TMNs tend to exclude adaptation in high-priority intermediary cities. Nearly 40 semi-structured interviews with Indonesian city actors and a preliminary catalogue of cities participating in TMNs reveal that risk-averse selection criteria, insufficient impact assessments, and duplicative institutional efforts reinforce disparities between primary and intermediary cities. To effectively build adaptive capacity in the most vulnerable regions, TMNs should remove participation barriers for intermediary cities, improve incentives for institutional collaboration, and adopt more rigorous evaluative metrics. These results directly inform the governance, resource allocation, and operational goals of TMN stakeholders to advance distributive climate justice.

ADS 201 Additional Help- Whole-of-Project Evaluation - USAID (USAID, 2017)

Addressing the evaluation-of-sustainability-paradox: A relational rubric for evidencing… - Guerzovich, Florencia (Medium, 2024)
Florencia Guerzovich and Alix Wadeson

Addressing Maladaptive Coping Strategies of Local Communities to Changes in Ecosystem Service Provisions Using the DPSIR Framework - Ehara, Makoto; Hyakumura, Kimihiko; Sato, Ren'ya; Kurosawa, Kiyoshi; Araya, Kunio; Sokh, Heng; Kohsaka, Ryo (Ecological Economics, 2018)
The Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework has been applied to various environmental problems at multiple spatial and temporal scales and attempts have been made to conceptually improve the framework to encompass various stakeholder perspectives. However, recent literature experiences in the field have challenged the inclusive character of the framework applications. In particular, the framework's inability to incorporate the aggregated informal responses of people affected by changes in ecosystem service provisions has not been fully addressed. This limits the framework's validity in categorizing and disseminating information for addressing particular environmental challenges. Herein, we address this problem by analyzing a case study of deforestation and its impact on non-timber forest product collections by rural residents in Cambodia. We incorporate the concept of maladaptive coping strategies into the DPSIR framework and then further elaborate Ness et al.'s (2010) approach of merging the DPSIR framework with Hägerstrand's (2001) system of nested spatial domains. This conceptualizes the incorporation of the aggregated informal responses into the system, as exemplified in the case study.
Keywords: DPSIR framework; Ecosystem services; Maladaptive coping strategy; Nested spatial domains

Addressing gender in impact evaluation: What should be considered? - Fletcher, Gillian (Methods Lab, 2015)
Gender and sexuality are intimately entwined; we must not lose sight of the ways in which gender affects non-heterosexual people, transgender people and people who do not identify as either male or female. • Gender and gender-related injustice is a feature of all interventions, whatever the focus, be it agriculture, capacity building, disaster management, education, health, peace building, water, sanitation and hygiene, or other. • Showing an increase in the number of women participants in an intervention is not the same as demonstrating gender impact. An ‘add women and stir’ approach is not good enough. • A good intervention design will identify critical inequalities and conduct a needs assessment that clearly identifies gender-related issues. If this needs assessment feeds directly into the programme theory, it will facilitate assessment of the intervention’s gender-related impact and will be more likely it is to have positive gender-related impact.

Addressing challenges in communicating adaptation practices to smallholder farmers in Kenya through a radio intervention - Mwaniki, Fiona Nyawira; Gichuki, Charity; Mwangi, Maina; Mburia, Pamela; Wandago, Benson (Journal of Agriculture and Environment for International Development (JAEID), 2017)

Addressing attribution through contribution analysis: Using performance measures sensibly - Mayne, John (The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2001)
The changing culture of public administration involves accountability for results and outcomes. This article suggests that performance measurement can address such attribution questions. Contribution analysis has a major role to play in helping managers, researchers, and policymakers to arrive at conclusions about the contribution their program has made to particular outcomes. The article describes the steps necessary to produce a credible contribution story. Contents Accountability for Outcomes The Problem of Attribution The Case of Performance Measurement Recognizing the Limits of Measurement Two Uses of Performance Measurement: Understanding and Reporting Approaches to Attribution: Contribution Analysis Techniques for Strengthening Your Performance Story

Adding Up to Peace: The Cumulative Impacts of Peace Initiatives - Diana Chigas; Peter Woodrow (CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, 2018)
Adding Up to Peace: The Cumulative Impacts of Peace Initiatives aims to identify how cumulative impacts in peace practice operate at all levels, in order to provide practical lessons for policymakers, donors and practitioners to develop more effective strategies for greater progress towards peace. This book builds on CDA’s Reflecting on Peace Practice Project (RPP), launched to answer the question: What works—and what doesn’t work—in peacebuilding? It seeks to deepen our understanding of how multiple peacebuilding initiatives in a conflict zone interacted and added up (or didn’t), to result in progress towards larger societal level peace, or Peace Writ Large. The findings are a product of sixteen case studies conducted between 2007 and 2012, gathering the perceptions of both local and international stakeholders. The finalization of this book was generously funded by Humanity United. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Humanity United or of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects.

AdaptScan - Improving your Team's Adaptive Management - Mercy Corps (Mercy Corps, 2020)

Adaptiveness through ‘simplest tools and practices’ - Prieto Martin, Pedro (Institute of Development Studies, 2017)
In recent years, more and more influential development organisations have been openly recognising the central role that adaptive management capacities – the ability to keep improving strategies and actions as programmes unfold – play for the success of complex interventions. As a result, there has been a rich exchange of ideas and experiences on how to promote adaptiveness in development. But development organisations and professionals are having a hard time translating the many adaptive theories and recommendations into improved practices and outcomes. They are generally failing to adjust the design and operation of programmes to accommodate incipient lessons learnt and the unexpected changes in the context. Nowadays, most programme adaptations still take the form of a change of direction once it is clear that things have gone really wrong. Why is so difficult to put what we know about adaptiveness into practice? And more importantly: what can be done to improve this situation?

Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems - Highsmith, Jim (Dorset House Publishing, 2000)
In today's turbulent e-business world, software project teams that survive and thrive won't be those that continue their traditions of optimization, efficiency, and control, but those that exhibit adaptability, speed, and collaboration. Adaptive Software Development is targeted at software teams where competition creates extreme pressure on the delivery process. Four goals of the book are * to support an adaptive culture in which change and uncertainty are assumed to be the natural state * to introduce frameworks to guide the iterative process of managing change * to institute collaboration, the interaction of people on interpersonal, cultural, and structural levels * to add rigor and discipline to the RAD approach, making it scalable to the uncertainty and complexity of real-world undertakings. This innovative text, grounded in the science of complex adaptive systems theory, offers a practical, realistic approach to managing the high-speed, high-change projects characteristic of our highly uncertain economy.

Adaptive Programming: The “Space of Possibility” - Seavey, Sara Mizuta (USAID Learning Lab, 2016)
Sara Mizuta Seavey, M.A., is a Senior Program Officer at FHI360 for the Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research (mSTAR) project, where she works with USAID’s Digital Development Team to conceive, design, and test how real-time data systems can enable a more adaptive and participatory approach to development. She is passionate about systems thinking and participatory approaches to international development. What does space travel have to do with international development?

Adaptive programming in practice: shared lessons from the DFID-funded LASER and SAVI programmes - Derbyshire, Helen; Donovan, Elbereth (DFID-LASER Programme, 2016)
LASER synthesis papers aim to help donors and other stakeholders better understand why and how to approach investment climate reform programming differently. The papers reflect emerging best practice and lessons learnt on what works and what does not work in doing development differently. The papers have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field including senior advisers at DFID, World Bank, IFC and the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (amongst others).
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

Adaptive Programming in Fragile, Conflict and Violence-Affected Settings, What Works and Under What Conditions?: The Case of Pyoe Pin, Myanmar - Christie, Angela; Green, Duncan (Itad, Oxfam and IDS, 2018)
This paper examines adaptive approaches in aid programming in a fragile, conflict and violence-affected setting (FCVAS), namely Myanmar. A combination of desk review and field research has been used to examine some of the assertions around the ‘adaptive management’ approach, which has arisen in recent years as a response to critiques of overly rigid, pre-designed, blue-print and linear project plans. This paper explores if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning responses (fast feedback loops and agile programming) are particularly relevant and useful for promoting empowerment and accountability in such ‘messy places’. This case study focuses on Pyoe Pin (‘Young Shoots’), a DFID-funded, British Council managed governance programme, which has been running since 2007.
Keywords: A4EA; Adaptive Development; Economy; Fishery

Adaptive Programming in Fragile, Conflict and Violence-Affected Settings, What Works and Under What Conditions?: The Case of PERL, Nigeria - Punton, Melanie; Burge, Richard (Itad, Oxfam and IDS, 2018)
This paper examines adaptive approaches to aid programming in Nigeria. Through field research and desk reviews, we have investigated some of the assertions around the ‘adaptive management and programming’ approach, which has arisen in recent years as a response to critiques of overly rigid, pre-designed, blueprint and linear project plans. This is the second of three case studies in a series which explore if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning responses, are particularly relevant and useful for promoting empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS). This case study focuses on PERL (Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn) in Nigeria, a five-year governance programme (2016-21) with a total budget of £100 million. It aims to promote better service delivery through bringing together government and citizens groups to collectively address governance challenges. PERL is viewed by DFID as the final stage of a 20-year investment, building on learning, experience and partnerships from 15 years of DFID-funded governance programming in Nigeria. It was designed to incorporate learning and adaptation through a ‘living’ theory of change, continuous political economy analysis at different levels, adaptive implementation by location-based delivery teams who are encouraged to be flexible and let partners take the lead, regular learning and reflection, and adaptive resourcing, HR and administrative systems. The case study draws on a conceptual framework (the ‘adaptive triangle’) that looks at three types of adaptation – adaptive management, adaptive programming and adaptive delivery – and the interconnections and tensions between them.
Keywords: A4EA; Adaptive Development; Economy; Fishery

Adaptive Programming in Fragile, Conflict and Violence-Affected Settings, What Works and Under What Conditions?: The Case of Institutions for Inclusive Development, Tanzania - Green, Duncan; Guijt, Irene (Itad, Oxfam and IDS, 2019)
Adaptive Management involves a dynamic interaction between three elements: delivery, programming and governance. This case study focuses on a large DfID governance project, the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID), a five-year initiative in Tanzania. The study forms part of a research project to examine whether and how adaptive approaches can strengthen aid projects promoting empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS). The research examines some of the assertions around the adaptive management approach and explores if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning responses (fast feedback loops and agile programming) are particularly relevant and useful for citizen empowerment and government accountability (E&A) in FCVAS.
Keywords: A4EA; Adaptive Development; Economy; Fishery

Adaptive Programming and going with the grain: IMAGINE's new water governance model in Goma, DRC - Kirk, Tom; Green, Duncan; Stys, Patrycja; Mosquera, Tom (Development Policy Review, 2023)
Motivation This paper explores adaptive approaches to development programmes that aim at improving service provision in underperforming sectors in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS). It does this through a case study of the Integrated Maji Infrastructure and Governance Initiative for eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's (IMAGINE) public-private partnership model for water provision. Purpose The processes and decisions that culminated in IMAGINE's model emphasize the need for programming that is culturally and politically aware, responsive to events, learns in real-time, is entrepreneurial, and works with the grain of local institutions to support change. Detailed case studies of such ways of working are crucial for programmes that seek to challenge and reform the status quo in FCAS. Methods and approach The paper is based on 42 semi-structured interviews conducted in the summers of 2019 and 2020. They reflect the broad spectrum of actors – individuals, public authorities, and organisations – involved in IMAGINE's evolution. Findings The narrative focuses on IMAGINE's attempts to professionalise and commercialise Goma's water sector. It shows how as IMAGINE repeatedly adapted to ground realities, it took on the characteristics of a public authority, thereby, engendering backlashes that threated its longer-term goals. However, by revisiting its initial values and logics it was able to get things done and achieve it aims. Policy implications IMAGINE's story suggests that adaptive programmes should put politically savvy local development professionals in key positions and enable them to carefully construct coalitions of allies across the systems they aim to disrupt. This may also require them to revisit and adapt their initial ideas, guiding principles and values as greater understandings of development problems are gained. A pubic authorities lens, attuned to the logics programmes seek to address and introduce to FCAS, may help analysts to foreground the implications of such adaptations.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/dpr.12691

Adaptive Programming and Business Environment Reform – Lessons for DFID Zimbabwe - Donovan, Elbereth; Manuel, Clare (DFID, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptive programming - Vowles, Pete (DFID Bloggers, 2013)
Staff blogs from the UK Department for International Development. Get real-life perspectives from those on the ground to fight poverty and join in the debate.

Adaptive Peacebuilding Programming Through Effective Feedback Loops: Promising Practices - Barnard-Webster, Kiely; Jean, Isabella (CDA, 2018)
This case study report was developed by CDA’s part of Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium collaborative research on the use of feedback loops in support of adaptive programming. Feedback loops are just one element of adaptive programming and are defined and used in different ways by organizations working on social change, peace and development issues. This document includes key findings from our desk review of reports and grey literature, key informant interviews, observations documented during CDA’s advisory and learning engagements with peacebuilding partners as well as the case study on SFCG’s feedback processes in Burundi. The findings are most relevant to program and M&E staff but have implications for senior management and policymakers in light of growing interest in strengthening adaptive management.

Adaptive monitoring: a new paradigm for long-term research and monitoring - Lindenmayer, David B.; Likens, Gene E. (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2009)
Long-term research and monitoring can provide important ecological insights and are crucial for the improved management of ecosystems and natural resources. However, many long-term research and monitoring programs are either ineffective or fail completely owing to poor planning and/or lack of focus. Here we propose the paradigm of adaptive monitoring, which aims to resolve many of the problems that have undermined previous attempts to establish long-term research and monitoring. This paradigm is driven by tractable questions, rigorous statistical design at the outset, a conceptual model of the ecosystem or other entity being examined and a human need to know about ecosystem change. An adaptive monitoring framework enables monitoring programs to evolve iteratively as new information emerges and research questions change.

Adaptive management: why we find it so hard to operationalise - Teskey, Graham (Abt Associates - Governance Soapbox, 2018)

Adaptive management: where are we now? - Rist, Lucy; Campbell, Bruce M.; Frost, Peter (Environmental Conservation, 2013)
Adaptive management (AM) emerged in the literature in the mid-1970s in response both to a realization of the extent of uncertainty involved in management, and a frustration with attempts to use modelling to integrate knowledge and make predictions. The term has since become increasingly widely used in scientific articles, policy documents and management plans, but both understanding and application of the concept is mixed. This paper reviews recent literature from conservation and natural resource management journals to assess diversity in how the term is used, highlight ambiguities and consider how the concept might be further assessed. AM is currently being used to describe many different management contexts, scales and locations. Few authors define the term explicitly or describe how it offers a means to improve management outcomes in their specific management context. Many do not adhere to the idea as it was originally conceived, despite citing seminal work. Significant confusion exists over the distinction between active and passive approaches. Over half of the studies reporting to implement AM claimed to have done so successfully, yet none quantified specific benefits, or costs, in relation to possible alternatives. Similarly those studies reporting to assess the approach did so only in relation to specific models and their parameterizations; none assessed the benefits or costs of AM in the field. AM is regarded by some as an effective and well-established framework to support the management of natural resources, yet by others as a concept difficult to realize and fraught with implementation challenges; neither of these observations is wholly accurate. From a scientific and technical perspective many practical questions remain; in particular real-world assessments of the value of experimentation within a management framework, as well as of identified challenges and pathologies, are needed. Further discussion and systematic assessment of the approach is required, together with greater attention to its definition and description, enabling the assessment of new approaches to managing uncertainty, and AM itself.
Keywords: Adaptive Management; Decision making; Natural resource management; conservation; experimental management; uncertainty

Adaptive management: What it means for CSOs - O’Donnell, Michael (Bond, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptive Management Tools: Concept Notes System - Mercy Corps (Mercy Corps, 2015)
Mercy Corps finds adaptive management is supported by four different but interconnected elements: Culture, People & Skills, Tools & Systems, and Enabling Environment. These elements are discussed in the context of one of Mercy Corps’ complex programmes in pastoral Ethiopia.

Adaptive Management, the Endangered Species Act, and the Institutional Challanges of New Age Environmental Protection - Doremus, Holly (Washburn Law Journal, 2001)

Adaptive Management Self-assessment tool - mercy Corps (Mercy Corps, 2016)
The Adaptive Management self-assessment tool has been designed to help teams assess the extent to which they have a supportive environment for adaptive management within their country program. The self-assessment tool helps you think about five different areas that have been identified as important for supporting adaptive management: 1. Culture & leadership 2. Dynamic teams 3. Appropriate analysis 4. Responsive implementation & operations 5. Enabling environment (for example donor funding and relationships)

Adaptive Management: Responding to the evolving needs of PRIME's complex systems - Picon, Diana; Wild, Lorenz (Mercy Corps, 2015)

Adaptive management: Promises and pitfalls - McLain, Rebecca J.; Lee, Robert G. (Environmental Management, 1996)
Proponents of the scientific adaptive management approach argue that it increases knowledge acquisition rates, enhances information flow among policy actors, and provides opportunities for creating shared understandings. However, evidence from efforts to implement the approach in New Brunswick, British Columbia, Canada, and the Columbia River Basin indicates that these promises have not been met. The data show that scientific adaptive management relies excessively on the use of linear systems models, discounts nonscientific forms of knowledge, and pays inadequate attention to policy processes that promote the development of shared understandings among diverse stakeholders. To be effective, new adaptive management efforts will need to incorporate knowledge from multiple sources, make use of multiple systems models, and support new forms of cooperation among stakeholders.

Adaptive Management Practice in the UK Government - The MUVA case - HLS (Human Learning Systems, 2019)
Case study about the MUVA programme in Mozambique. (Maybe it "misses the point of AP which is not learning for learning. Is learning for impact. The word impact doesn’t even come up once!") Adaptive Management programming within the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office demonstrates that the UK Government has examples of optimising for learning within its existing management practice. However, currently, the adaptive management practices are unhelpfully framed by an approach which limits both their effectiveness and scope. The programmes use learning as their metastrategy. They succeed in connecting practicebased learning with strategic learning, and make a shift towards reframing accountability as accountability for learning. This learning strategy is enabled by funding and contract management arrangements which prioritise learning. Both at macro-level of programme management and micro level of de-risking experimentation and enabling necessary failure by decoupling people’s job security from potential failure.

Adaptive Management of Renewable Resources - Walters, C. J. (Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1986)
The author challenges the traditional approach to dealing with uncertainty in the management of such renewable resources as fish and wildlife. He argues that scientific understanding will come from the experience of management as an ongoing, adaptive, and experimental process, rather than through basic research or the development of ecological theory. The opening chapters review approaches to formulating management objectives as well as models for understanding how policy choices affect the attainment of these objectives. Subsequent chapters present various statistical methods for understanding the dynamics of uncertainty in managed fish and wildlife populations and for seeking optimum harvest policies in the face of uncertainty. The book concludes with a look at prospects for adaptive management of complex systems, emphasizing such human factors involved in decision making as risk aversion and conflicting objectives as well as biophysical factors. Throughout the text dynamic models and Bayesian statistical theory are used as tools for understanding the behavior of managed systems. These tools are illustrated with simple graphs and plots of data from representative cases. This text/reference will serve researchers, graduate students, and resource managers who formulate harvest policies and study the dynamics of harvest populations, as well as analysts (modelers, statisticians, and stock assessment experts) who are concerned with the practice of policy design.

Adaptive management of natural resources: theory, concepts, and management institutions. - Stankey, George H.; Clark, Roger N.; Bormann, Bernard T. (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 2005)
This report reviews the extensive and growing literature on the concept and application of adaptive management. Adaptive management is a central element of the Northwest Forest Plan and there is a need for an informed understanding of the key theories, concepts, and frameworks upon which it is founded. Literature from a diverse range of ﬁelds including social learning, risk and uncertainty, and institutional analysis was reviewed, particularly as it related to application in an adaptive management context. The review identiﬁes opportunities as well as barriers that adaptive management faces. It concludes by describing steps that must be taken to implement adaptive management.

Adaptive management of natural resources—framework and issues - Williams, Byron K. (Journal of Environmental Management, 2011)
Adaptive management, an approach for simultaneously managing and learning about natural resources, has been around for several decades. Interest in adaptive decision making has grown steadily over that time, and by now many in natural resources conservation claim that adaptive management is the approach they use in meeting their resource management responsibilities. Yet there remains considerable ambiguity about what adaptive management actually is, and how it is to be implemented by practitioners. The objective of this paper is to present a framework and conditions for adaptive decision making, and discuss some important challenges in its application. Adaptive management is described as a two-phase process of deliberative and iterative phases, which are implemented sequentially over the timeframe of an application. Key elements, processes, and issues in adaptive decision making are highlighted in terms of this framework. Special emphasis is given to the question of geographic scale, the difﬁculties presented by non-stationarity, and organizational challenges in implementing adaptive management.

Adaptive management of an environmental watering event to enhance native fish spawning and recruitment - King, A. J.; Ward, K. A.; O’connor, P.; Green, D.; Tonkin, Z.; Mahoney, J. (Freshwater Biology, 2010)
1. A common goal of many environmental flow regimes is to maintain and/or enhance the river’s native fish community by increasing the occurrence of successful spawning and recruitment events. However, our understanding of the flow requirements of the early life history of fish is often limited, and hence predicting their response to specific managed flow events is difficult. To overcome this uncertainty requires the use of adaptive management principles in the design, implementation, monitoring and adjustment of environmental flow regimes. 2. The Barmah-Millewa Forest, a large river red gum forest on the Murray River floodplain, south-east Australia, contains a wide variety of ephemeral and permanent aquatic habitats suitable for fish. Flow regulation of the Murray River has significantly altered the natural flood regime of the Forest. In an attempt to alleviate some of the effects of river regulation, the Forest’s water regime is highly managed using a variety of flow control structures and also receives targeted Environmental Water Allocations (EWA). In 2005, the largest environmental flow allocated to date in Australia was delivered at the Forest. 3. This study describes the adaptive management approach employed during the delivery of the 2005 EWA, which successfully achieved multiple ecological goals including enhanced native fish spawning and recruitment. Intensive monitoring of fish spawning and recruitment provided invaluable real-time and ongoing management input for optimising the delivery of environmental water to maximise ecological benefits at Barmah-Millewa Forest and other similar wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin. 4. We discuss possible scenarios for the future application of environmental water and the need for environmental flow events and regimes to be conducted as rigorous, large-scale experiments within an adaptive management framework.
Keywords: floodplain river; regulated flows

Adaptive Management looks like it’s here to stay. Here’s why that matters. - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
First installment of reflections on my US trip. This is on the rise of adaptive management approaches in USAID, and some of the questions it raises
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptive Management: Learning and Action Approaches to Implementing Norms-shifting Interventions - McLarnon, Courtney; Gayles, Jennifer; Deepan, Prabu (USAID / Passages, 2021)
What Passages has Learned about Adaptive Management: • Be reflective about information that is collected and create a culture of learning. • Be systematic about establishing monitoring and learning systems. • Be strategic about data sources and analysis, prioritizing areas for learning and addressing issues raised. • Be inclusive about information collection: who is collecting what, how, and how is it being used.

Adaptive Management Leaders Launch Practical Adaptation Network (PAN) - Labs, Feedback (FeedbackLabs, 2016)
Great things can happen at the frontier of theory and practice. When Feedback Labs worked with USAID’s Global Development Lab to bring together leaders in adaptive management at the White House on June 15th, we were pleased that we were able to move past the ongoing conceptual conversations toward discussing what we could do in concrete terms to implement adaptive management in practice.

Adaptive management intentions with a reality of evaluation: Getting science back into policy - Hasselman, Lyndal (Environmental Science & Policy, 2017)
In Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin water reform has been contentious as government attempts to reconcile historical over allocation of water to irrigation with the use of water for environmental outcomes. However, in many aspects, scientific knowledge of the environment is either imperfect, incomplete or environmental responses are unpredictable, with this uncertainty preventing definitive policy and closure of political arguments. In response to uncertainty and knowledge gaps, adaptive management has been written into the legislation, along with provisions for periodic evaluation. This research ascertains how adaptive management is understood by policy makers, with this indicative of future implementation of adaptive management. The way in which adaptive management is constructed by policy makers is determined through legislation, public speeches, government reports and semi-structured interviews. The findings demonstrate that adaptive management has been subsumed by evaluation. The loss of adaptive management as a distinct concept is seen as a loss of science and discovery from the policy process, with the dominance of evaluation discussed as limiting innovation and reinforcing a ‘muddling through’ of policy.
Keywords: Accountability; Adaptive Management; Evaluation; Science; Uncertainty

Adaptive management in wildlife conservation - Organ, John; Decker, D.J.; McDonald, J.E.; Riley, Shawn; Mahoney, S.P. (The Wildlife Society Techniques Manual, 2012)
Adaptive management in wildlife conservation emerged from the wildlife profession's search for better solutions to increasingly complex conservation challenges. Adaptive management is an effective process for wildlife managers to employ to (1) deal with uncertainty in the management system, (2) learn from their management actions, and (3) achieve desired results. Being adaptable or flexible in your management approach is not the same as managing adaptively or conducting adaptive management. Adaptive management requires adhering to a stepwise process and fully executing each step. A critical step is rigorous monitoring and assessment of management interventions. Without this, wildlife managers cannot achieve the essence of adaptive management, which is the explicit goal of learning more about the management system after each management action.

Adaptive Management in the Face of Climate Change and Endangered Species Protection - Gardner, Emily (Ecology Law Quarterly, 2013)

Adaptive Management in the Courts - Fischman, Robert L.; Ruhl, J.B. (Minnesota Law Review, 2010)
Adaptive management has become the tonic of natural resources policy. With its core idea of “learning while doing,” adaptive management has infused the natural resources policy world to the point of ubiquity, surfacing in everything from mundane agency permits to grand presidential proclamations. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that these days adaptive management is natural resources policy. But is it working? Does appending “adaptive” in front of “management” somehow make natural resources policy, which has always been about balancing competing claims to nature’s bounty, something more and better? Many legal and policy scholars have asked that question, with mixed reviews. Their evaluations, however, have rested on theory, program-specific surveys, and isolated case studies. This article provides the first comprehensive review of adaptive management from the perspective that likely matters most to the natural resource agencies practicing adaptive management - how is it faring in the courts? Part I of the Article examines the theory, policy, and practice of adaptive management, focusing on the experience of the federal resource management agencies. The end product in practice is something we call “a m-lite,” a watered down version of the theory that resembles ad hoc contingency planning more than it does planned “learning while doing.” This gap between theory and practice leads to profound disparities between how agencies justify decisions and how adaptive management in practice arrives at the courthouse doorsteps. In Part II we review how these disparities have played out in courts considering claims that agency practice of adaptive management has not lived up to its theoretical promise or to the legal demands of substantive and procedural environmental law. We extract three key themes from the body of case law in this respect. Part III extends from the existing case law to draw lessons for agencies and Congress about the future practice of adaptive management. Our ultimate message to agencies is that a m-lite can be an effective decision method - and one that survives judicial scrutiny - but agencies must be more disciplined about its design and implementation. This includes resisting the temptation to employ adaptive management to dodge burdensome procedural requirements, substantive management criteria, and contentious stakeholder participation. If faithfully followed and enforced, this model, despite its flaws, could serve as an important component of natural resources policy to confront problems of the future as daunting as climate change.

Adaptive Management in SDC: Challenges and Opportunities - Prieto Martin, Pedro; Apgar, Marina; Hernandez, Kevin (IDS, 2020)
Adaptive management (AM) is a programme management approach that helps international development organisations to become more learning-oriented and more effective in addressing complex development challenges. AM practices have been applied for decades within other sectors as varied as logistics, manufacturing, product design, military strategy, software development and lean enterprise. At its core, AM is not much more than common sense, as it essentially recognises that the solutions to complex and dynamic problems cannot be identified at the outset of a programme but need to emerge throughout the process of implementation as a result of systematic and intentional monitoring and learning. The generic AM process typically involves an iterative cycle of design, implementation, reflection and adaptation activities, supported both by system monitoring and stakeholder involvement to obtain a better understanding of the evolving system and improve how the intervention is managed. A favourable context for AM in development. During recent decades, the international development sector has aimed to increase its results and impact orientation. As a result, a growing number of development organisations and governments have become increasingly aware of the limitations of traditional ‘linear and prescriptive’ programming approaches. They are now recognising the need to handle complexity better, and have begun to adapt their policies and practices to facilitate adaptive approaches. The World Bank, for example, now acknowledges that aid agencies need to increase flexibility of implementation, tolerate greater risk and ambiguity, devolve power from aid providers to aid partners, and avoid simplistic linear schemes for measuring results. Multilateral and bilateral organisations such as the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s (UK) Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are currently experimenting with adaptive approaches. A multitude of adaptive approaches and communities of practice have emerged that aim to improve the effectiveness of aid, including Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting, Thinking and Working Politically, Doing Development Differently, Market Systems Development, Conflict-Sensitive Programme Management, and Science of Delivery. Since generic AM approaches have existed for decades in other sectors, AM has the potential to act as a neutral ‘bridge language’ that facilitates exchange and learning among the different communities and donors. This report is the result of a learning partnership between the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). It assesses the relevance of AM to SDC, how it relates to working practices across SDC, and the key challenges and opportunities for SDC. Its process of elaboration involved a literature review on AM, an exploration of AM approaches from several bilateral donors, a series of 6 interviews with SDC staff and partners working in different countries and thematic domains, and a learning workshop at SDC headquarters (HQ), where staff from several SDC divisions reflected on AM and on how to advance the organisation’s capacity for adaptive programming and learning.

Adaptive Management in Practice: a case study on the Prospects program - Maclay, Chris (Mercy Corps, 2016)
Recognising that aid and development programming takes place in complex contexts, Mercy Corps is increasingly seeking to understand how best to manage programs which iterate, adapt and respond to the consistently evolving settings in which we work. This brief Practice Paper provides some examples of what adaptive management looks like in practice on the Prospects youth employment program in Liberia. It does not seek to function as a manual or set of guidelines, but simply provides some practical examples and insights into how a youth employment program governed by principles of adaptive management operates.

Adaptive Management in Habitat Conservation Plans - Wilhere, George F. (Conservation Biology, 2002)
Habitat conservation plans (HCPs) allow incidental take of threatened or endangered species in exchange for conservation measures that minimize and mitigate such taking. Habitat conservation plans entail a compromise between regulatory certainty and scientific uncertainty. This compromise is controversial because many HCPs are thought to inadequately address scientific uncertainty. Adaptive management is the systematic acquisition and application of reliable information to improve natural resource management over time. Ideally, under adaptive management, conservation strategies are implemented as a deliberate experiment. This approach can establish cause-and-effect relationships and point the way toward optimal strategies. Adaptive management has been promoted as essential to management under uncertainty, but few HCPs incorporate genuine adaptive management. Habitat conservation plans will continue to lack adaptive management until certain conditions are met, such as acknowledgment that an HCP is a management hypothesis, landowner interest in improving biological outcomes, and sufficient financial resources. Economic incentives would encourage adaptive management in HCPs. Habitat conservation plan permittees might receive direct payments or tax deductions for reliable information that benefits a species. “Mitigation credits” could be awarded for information produced through adaptive management. In effect, habitat would be exchanged for information that benefits a species. Successful use of mitigation credits would depend on correctly valuing information and enforcement of the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Under a “precautionary polluter pays principle,” an HCP permittee would put up an environmental assurance bond. Portions of the bond are returned with interest as adaptive management demonstrates that environmental damages are unlikely to occur. Funds spent on adaptive management are funds unavailable for habitat protection, so limited financial resources may force a compromise between protecting habitat and acquiring knowledge.

Adaptive management in aid programmes (BEAM Exchange, 2014)
Aid works better – especially in complex and conflict-affected environments – when there is scope to trial and adapt programme strategies. So argues Amir Allana in Navigating Complexity, a case study of Northern Karamoja's Growth, Health and Governance (GHG) Programme that is adopting an 'adaptive management' approach. This BEAM Exchange webinar invited Amir, Tim Sparkman and Peter Roggekamp to discuss lessons from their work in Uganda and Cambodia. What does adaptive management look like in practice? And what does it require of managers and funders to make it happen? Tim and Peter share their experiences of applying adaptive management techniques to the Growth, Health and Governance Programme and the Cambodia Agricultural Value Chain Program (CAVAC). Amir highlight insights from the Navigating Complexity report, including the importance of office culture, consistent management signals, and the role of supportive tools and processes.

Adaptive Management: From More Talk to Real Action - Williams, Byron K.; Brown, Eleanor D. (Environmental Management, 2014)
The challenges currently facing resource managers are large-scale and complex, and demand new approaches to balance development and conservation goals. One approach that shows considerable promise for addressing these challenges is adaptive management, which by now is broadly seen as a natural, intuitive, and potentially effective way to address decision-making in the face of uncertainties. Yet the concept of adaptive management continues to evolve, and its record of success remains limited. In this article, we present an operational framework for adaptive decision-making, and describe the challenges and opportunities in applying it to real-world problems. We discuss the key elements required for adaptive decision-making, and their integration into an iterative process that highlights and distinguishes technical and social learning. We illustrate the elements and processes of the framework with some successful on-the-ground examples of natural resource management. Finally, we address some of the difficulties in applying learning-based management, and finish with a discussion of future directions and strategic challenges.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptive Management for International Development Programs - Loveridge, Donna (2007)
Capacity development, that is “the process whereby people, organisations and society as a whole unleash, strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity over time” (OECD 2005) has been a key aim of international aid programs. However, capacity development efforts have not met with resounding success despite approximately 25%, or USD15 billion a year, being spent by donors in recent years on technical assistance1 which has predominantly been aimed at developing capacity. A 1998 review by the World Bank (World Bank 1998) found that the success rate for capacity development efforts was between 30 – 40%. The Commission for Africa (2005) noted in 2005 that achievements were below expectations. The OECD (2007) sees capacity development as being one of the areas which are least responsive to development assistance and therefore one of the greatest challenges. This paper proposes that development practitioners and donors could benefit from taking an evaluative inquiry-type of approach to the design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of capacity development programs. An alternative approach, “adaptive management”, is proposed. Adaptive management moves away from a rational linear A + B = C approach to capacity development towards constructing and testing theories of change2 for knowledge generation, adaptation and program improvement.

Adaptive Management and Social Learning in Collaborative and Community-Based Monitoring: a Study of Five Community-Based Forestry Organizations in the western USA - Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria; Ballard, Heidi; Sturtevant, Victoria (Ecology and Society, 2008)
Fernandez-Gimenez, M. E., H. L. Ballard, and V. E. Sturtevant. 2008. Adaptive management and social learning in collaborative and community-based monitoring: a study of five community-based forestry organizations in the western USA. Ecology and Society 13(2): 4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-02400-130204

Adaptive management: an overview of the concept and its practical application in the Scottish context - Blackstock, Kirsty; Brown, Katrina; Gimona, Alessandro; Prager, Katrin; Irvine, Justin (The James Hutton Institute, 2016)

Adaptive Management Across Project Cycles: Look into Coherence in Time - Guerzovich, Florencia (Medium, 2023)
This is a series about Monitoring, Evaluating and Learning (MEL) whether sets of interventions/portfolios are adding more together than each one would produce on their own. In post 1, I pointed to coherence, the new OECD-DAC evaluation criteria as a way to bridge the ambition of bringing bigger change with the MEL world. In post 2, I shared 3 of 4 practical lessons I’ve learned in experimenting with MEL systems and exercises that focus explicitly on interactions of interventions/portfolios. In the third post, I bring Paul Pierson’s groundbreaking argument for social science to MEL. Paraphrasing, most contemporary MEL takes a “snapshot” view of interventions and portfolios, distorting their effects and meaning by ripping them from their temporal context. Instead, we should place in time interventions/portfolios with the ambition to add more than the sum of the part by constructing MEL systems looking at “moving pictures” rather than taking snapshots. ...

Adaptive Management: A Tool for Conservation Practitioners - Salafsky, Nick; Margoluis, Richard; Redford, Kent (Foundations of Success, 2001)

Adaptive management: A practical guide to mitigating uncertainty and advancing evidence-based programming - Byom, K.; Ingram, M.; Oakley, A.; Serpe, L. (PACT, 2020)
Pact’s Adaptive Management Guide provides practical guidance to development practitioners globally on the mindsets, behaviors, resources, and processes that underpin an effective adaptive management system. It presents an approach to managing adaptively that is rooted in complexity analysis and program theory. It draws on Pact’s global experiences and work on topics as diverse as health, livelihoods, markets, governance, capacity development, women and youth, and more. This document begins with an introduction to adaptive management, then walks through successive steps to determine how much adaptation a project requires and how to design an appropriate system. The second half of this guidebook contains a toolkit of examples and templates that projects can tailor to their needs.

Adaptive Management - Bormann, B.T.; Martin, J.R.; Wagner, F.H.; Wood, G.W.; Alegria, J. (Ecological stewardship: a common reference for ecosystem management, 1999)
Wagner
Google-Books-ID: a5vuAAAAMAAJ
Keywords: Conservation of natural resources; Ecology; Ecosystem management; Ecosystem management - United States; Environmental Science; Environmental management; Wildlife

Adaptive Management - Jenal, Marcus; Cunningham, Shawn (Annual Reflection 2019, 2019)

Adaptive Learning Guide: A pathway to stronger collaboration, learning, and adapting - Ross, Joey; Karlage, James; Etheridge, James; Alade, Mayowa; Fifield, Jocelyn; Goodwin, Christian; Semrau, Katherine; Hirschhorn, Lisa (USAID MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator, 2021)
The purpose of this Adaptive Learning Guide is to provide MOMENTUM project teams with the information and resources to integrate adaptive learning into the design, implementation, and improvement of MNCH/FP/RH programs. This guide provides a conceptual introduction to adaptive learning using links to existing resources and real-world examples of how adaptive learning can drive continuous learning and improvement in project work. The guide is built upon three foundational assumptions: We work in dynamic, often unpredictable environments. Unexpected turns of events will occur. Progress is rarely, if ever, linear. Integrating the principles and practices of USAID’s Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting Toolkit into projects and initiatives requires designing for learning and adaptation. We intend the guide to serve as a “starting point” for interested individuals and teams to begin or strengthen the processes that support the integration of adaptive learning into project work.

Adaptive Learning - Guerzovich, Florencia; Poli, Maria (Global Partnership for Social Accountability, 2014)

Adaptive leadership in the coronavirus response - Ramalingam, Ben; Wild, Leni; Ferrari, Matt (ODI, 2020)
The coronavirus pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to science, policy and the interface between the two. How – and how quickly – policy-makers, practitioners and researchers react to this emerging and complex crisis is making a profound difference to people’s lives and livelihoods (WHO, 2020). But how can we ensure effective collective decision-making on the basis of emerging evidence, changing trends and shifting scientific understanding, all in the face of considerable uncertainty? Recent experience highlights the need for adaptive leadership in national and global responses to the outbreak. This briefing paper sets out key principles for what this might look like, and proposes a roadmap for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers to move towards such an approach as they tackle the unfolding crisis. Key messages Tackling the coronavirus outbreak requires adaptation at operational and leadership levels. Operationally, there is scope to strengthen evidence-based adaptive management practices, to adjust the mix and type of interventions being implemented and learn as we go so as to achieve shared goals. This requires adaptive leadership capacities, being open and transparent about learning, using collective decision-making processes and building trust with communities and individuals.

Adaptive Leadership in Development course - Moran, Mark; Curth-Bibb, Jodie; Grice, Tim; Glavey, Sarah (University of Queensland, 2017)

Adaptive Leadership: Accelerating Enterprise Agility - Highsmith, Jim (Addison-Wesley Professional., 2013)

Adaptive Impact Management: An Integrative Approach to Wildlife Management - Riley, Shawn; Siemer, William; Decker, Daniel; Carpenter, Len; Organ, John; Berchielli, Louis (Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 2003)

Adaptive Evaluation: A Complexity-based approach to Systematic Learning for Innovation and Scaling in Development - Gokhale, Siddhant; Walton, Michael (Center for International Development, Harvard University, 2023)
Nearly all challenges in international development tend to be complex because they depend on constantly evolving human behaviour, systems, and contexts, involving multiple actors, entities, and processes. As a result, both the discovery and scaling of innovations to address challenges in development often involve changes in system behaviour or even system-level transformation. This is rarely a linear process over time and can result in unexpected outcomes. Existing evaluation techniques commonly used in international development, including Randomized Control Trials (RCT) and quasi-experimental methods, are good at assessing specific effects of interventions but are not designed for the change processes inherent to innovation and scaling within a system. There is a need to reconstruct how we use existing measurement tools, techniques, and methodologies so that they capture the complexity of the environment in which an intervention or change occurs. We introduce Adaptive Evaluation, designed to learn at various levels of complexity while supporting the transformation needed to foster sustainable change. An Adaptive Evaluation uses three main approaches to work with complex questions—systems diagnosis, theorybased assessment of change processes, and iterative designs. An Adaptive Evaluation typically builds hypotheses from field-based interactions, emphasizes learning over testing, advocates open-mindedness with techniques, and appreciates the value of dialogue and participation in navigating complex processes. It can use RCT or similar techniques to analyse specific processes within a system or a development cycle, but these are embedded in a broader approach to assessment and interpretation. It is designed to be flexible and adjust to shifting contexts. Finally, an Adaptive Evaluation can be applied at any stage in a complex intervention's lifecycle, from the interpretation of the system and change processes to rapid experimentation, prototyping, and testing of select interventions, and then adaptation to different settings for impact at scale. This paper provides the theoretical basis for an Adaptive Evaluation—the main approaches, core ideology, process, and applications.

Adaptive environmental assessment and management: a new approach to environmental impact assessment - Jones, Michael L.; Greig, Lorne A. (New directions in environmental impact assessment in Canada, 1985)

Adaptive environmental assessment and management - Holling, C. S. (Wiley, 1978)
Keywords: Ecology; Economic development; Environmental impact analysis; Environmental protection

Adaptive Development Switchboard - Final Report (Internal Document) - Feedback Labs (LearnAdapt Programme, 2018)

Adaptive development: great progress and some niggles - Vowles, Pete (Medium, 2016)
After 3 years in DFID headquarters, championing adaptive approaches to the delivery of aid and development programmes, I am back in an…

Adaptive Bureaucracies: lessons from DFID to the world - Simpson, Lea (LearnAdapt, 2020)
How many times have you worked on something that you know is failing, or just isn’t going as well as we’d all have hoped, but haven’t had…

’Adaptive Authoritarianism’ in Contemporary China: Identifying Zones of Legitimacy Building - Ahlers, Anna Lisa; Schubert, Gunter (Reviving Legitimacy: Lessons for and from China, 2011)
Anna L. Ahlers and Gunter Schubert, ’Adaptive Authoritarianism’ in Contemporary China: Identifying Zones of Legitimacy Building, in: Deng Zhenglai and Guo Sujian (eds), Reviving Legitimacy: Lessons for and from China, Lanham: Lexington Books (2011),

Adapting to Learn and Learning to Adapt: Practical Insights from International Development Projects - Brinkerhoff, Derick W.; Frazer, Sarah; McGregor, Lisa (RTI Press, 2018)
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.

Adapting to learn and learning to adapt: Practical insights from international development projects - Brinkerhoff, Derick; Frazer, Sarah (RTI, 2018)
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.

Adapting lean thinking to market systems development: Principles and practices for donors/funders - Rasmussen, Leanne (Engineers without borders, 2014)
The purpose of this paper is to provide funders and implementers of market systems development (MSD) projects with principles, practices, and structures that enables these projects to thrive. It is based on a book that has sold millions of copies worldwide, and a school of thought taught at institutions such as Harvard Business School and practiced in companies ranging from giants such as Toyota to the most successful tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. Published in 2011, Eric Ries wrote the Lean Startup as a remedy to the countless start-ups that create their own demises by getting started with the wrong goals, the wrong structures, and the wrong processes. He outlines an approach that enables the startup to navigate ambiguity and risk while using resources effectively. The conditions a MSD project faces are remarkably similar to those which a startup business faces; it needs structures and processes that are matched to the unpredictable, complex environment which it is attempting to influence. MSD projects can thus benefit from private-sector thought leadership on how start-ups can situate themselves for success. This paper starts with an overview of lean thinking, a concept that derives from lean manufacturing which is widely accepted as the leading approach to modern manufacturing. It explains how Ries’s Lean Startup adapts these principles, and then it in turn adapts these ideas for market systems development. The following three sections provide an overview of Lean Startup concepts, applying them to the development sector as appropriate. The final section summarizes and makes suggestions on next steps for funders who wish to set MSD projects up for success using a lean approach. Overall, the paper builds a case for how the Lean Startup’s approach can enable MSD projects to work successfully in ambiguity and increase their potential for achieving robust and sustainable results, all while using donor resources more efficiently.
Keywords: Adaptive Development; Lean

Adapting development: improving services to the poor - Wild, Leni; Booth, David; Cummings, Clare; Foresti, Marta; Wales, Joseph (ODI, 2015)
On current trends, it will take decades or longer to bring basic services to the world’s most disadvantaged people. Meeting this challenge means recognising the political conditions that enable or obstruct development progress - a radical departure from the approach of the Millennium Development Goals.
Keywords: Practice

Adapting data collection and utilisation to a Covid-19 reality: Monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches for adaptive management - Ziegler, Jessica; Mason, Paige (ODI/GLAM, 2020)
This briefing note focuses on the remote collection and use of data for adaptive management during the Covid-19 pandemic, setting out key considerations to help practitioners think through a transition from more ‘traditional’ monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to MEL for adaptive management (MEL4AM) that reflects the unique data collection challenges presented by Covid-19. The brief provides an overview of some key considerations in remote data collection, when this is required, and identifies other sources that address these issues in more detail. It concludes with a discussion of how to bring the information resulting from remote monitoring into decision-making to enable adaptive management. Key messages - When planning for remote data collection during the Covid-19 pandemic, first determine what information is still necessary, because data needs may have changed, e.g. if programming has pivoted or needs to pivot due to Covid-19. Then identify how the programme’s information needs align with existing data sources and what gaps remain, which will guide the need for remote data collection. - Also consider what data is ‘good enough’ for current decision-making needs in order to provide sufficient information to the right people at the right time to an acceptable standard of rigour. - There may be pragmatic reasons to reduce the number or scope of MEL activities, such as logistical constraints or ethical considerations introduced by the pandemic. - MEL activities should be accompanied by frequent feedback loops and pause points to reflect on emergent needs and challenges, information needs that have been met, and contextual changes that may affect MEL. - Be clear with decision-makers about the assumptions and gaps in the data, including proxies used and their limitations, sampling changes, and how these changes and assumptions may affect the decisions/options being discussed.

Adapting Aid: Lessons from six case studies - Algoso, Dave; Beloe, Jon; Hemberger, Alison; Hill, Philippa; Proud, Emma (MercyCorps & IRC, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptation in practice: lessons from teenage pregnancy programmes in Sierra Leone - Castillejo, Clare; Buell, Stephanie (ODI, 2020)
A discussion of initial learning emerging from the SLRC ’Adaptive approaches to reducing teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone’ action research project.

Adaptability: the art of winning in an age of uncertainty - McKeown, Max (Kogan Page, 2012)
Keywords: Adaptability (Psychology); Success

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure - Harford, Tim (Abacus, 2012)
Everything we know about solving the world's problems is wrong. Out: Plans, experts and above all, leaders. In: Adapting - improvise rather than plan; fail, learn, and try againIn this groundbreaking new book, Tim Harford shows how the world's most complex and important problems - including terrorism, climate change, poverty, innovation, and the financial crisis - can only be solved from the bottom up by rapid experimenting and adapting.From a spaceport in the Mojave Desert to the street battles of Iraq, from a blazing offshore drilling rig to everyday decisions in our business and personal lives, this is a handbook for surviving - and prospering - in our complex and ever-shifting world.

Adapt LLC - Adapt LLC (Adapt Consult)
Doing Development Differently… Adapt LLC provides expertise to international development practitioners seeking to improve the impacts of their investments through a more in-depth understanding of the political and economic risks and opportunities associated with programming in complex environments. The Adapt team enhances the design and implementation of international development assistance strategies, programs, and projects around the world.

ADAPT: Analysis Driven Agile Programming Techniques - IRC (International Rescue Committee (IRC), 2016)
A growing body of research indicates that aid agencies are most successful when able to operate flexibly, particularly in fragile environments. Yet our systems and tools are often too rigid to effectively address complex problems, and program incentives frequently undermine adaptation instead of supporting it. To drive improvements in impact we need to be better able to analyse the dynamics of a given situation, anticipate how these might evolve, and be sufficiently agile to adapt to changes in context and need.

+Acumen MOOC: Adaptive Leadership: Mobilizing for Change and Disrupting the Status Quo - +Acumen (NovoEd, 2017)
This four-module course by +Acumen and Adaptive Change Advisors on adaptive leadership, which is a practical leadership framework developed at Harvard Kennedy School for driving systemic change, particularly during times of uncertainty or when there are no easy answers.

Actually Navigating by Judgment: Towards a new paradigm of donor accountability where the current system doesn’t work - Honig, Dan (Center for Global Development, 2020)
This working paper explores how donors can move towards greater Navigation by Judgment, highlighting the actions people inside and outside aid agencies can work to make change—encouraging more Navigation by Judgment on the margin, starting today.

Acquisition and Assistance Strategy - USAID (USAID, 2018)
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) of tomorrow is one in which the Agency enables partner countries to plan, resource, and manage their own development through strengthened capacity and commitment — this is the essence of the Journey to Self-Reliance. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, the Agency obligated over 80 percent of its programmatic funding — a total of $17 billion — through acquisition and assistance (A&A) mechanisms. Partnering and procurement are central to how we do our work. Therefore, we must think holistically about with whom we work and how we work, if we are to achieve our ambitious goals for the USAID of tomorrow. The purpose of this document is to provide a transparent strategy that guides changes to Agency policy and practice for both our staff and implementing partners in how we approach our core A&A work. This strategy, which builds on previous and current reform efforts, outlines the shifts we will make to embrace a self-reliance model for A&A and move concretely toward the goal of ending the need for foreign assistance. GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF PARTNERING AT USAID USAID’s partnering approaches have evolved significantly over time as we have tested new and innovative ways of working. The principles outlined below support the Journey to Self-Reliance by empowering our staff and partners to produce results-driven solutions responsive to partner country needs and priorities — building capacity and commitment based on creative and entrepreneurial approaches that have already begun to develop. The Agency must move beyond our traditional approaches to embrace greater collaboration, co-design, and co-financing to improve upon our models of partnering.

Achieving value for money through procurement. Part 2: DFID’s approach to value for money through tendering and contract management - A performance review - ICAI (Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), 2018)
Summary In 2016-17, the Department for International Development (DFID) spent £1.4 billion, or 14% of its budget, through commercial suppliers on contracts ranging from school construction to family planning services and the delivery of humanitarian aid. The quality of its procurement and contract management – how it engages and manages commercial firms to support the delivery of aid programmes on time, to budget and at the appropriate quality – is a key driver of value for money for UK aid. It is also a subject of considerable Parliamentary and public interest. In recent years, DFID has implemented a range of initiatives to strengthen its procurement practices and embed commercial capability across the department – including its 2017 Supplier Review, undertaken to address concerns about excessive profit-making by DFID suppliers. This review on achieving value for money through procurement (part 2) was published in September 2018. We awarded a green-amber score and made three recommendations to government. The follow-up to this review was published in July 2020, and rated the government’s response as ‘inadequate’, as a result of DFID’s failure to put in place a formal contract management regime, despite the risks this entails for programme results. We will return to this in the next follow-up in summer 2021. Review Our review found an appropriate overall approach to procurement with good performance in most areas of tendering, but significant weaknesses in contract management. We therefore awarded a green-amber score and made three recommendations to government. Findings Since 2015, DFID has progressed towards a more mature procurement approach. DFID’s tender process follows current EU legislation and UK government guidelines and cross-government peer reviews confirm improvements in DFID’s procurement approach. The Supplier Review lent momentum to the reforms but risks having unintended consequences. Poor consultation with suppliers has heightened the risk of unintended consequences. DFID is reviewing its business processes to protect aid recipients from sexual abuse and exploitation. DFID does not always choose the most appropriate procurement process but a new strategic sourcing process has resulted in stronger procurement planning. DFID has built up its commercial capability, but this will need to be an ongoing process. The contract management function in DFID is poorly defined and contracts are frequently amended or extended beyond their advertised length and values. Inception phases are often too short for adequate preparation and planning. Progress on flexible and adaptive programming will require more innovative approaches to tendering and contract management. Recommendations Before the next major revision of its supplier code and contracting terms, or future changes that may materially affect suppliers, DFID should conduct an effective consultation process with its supplier market, to ensure informed decisions and minimise the risks of unintended consequences. DFID should accelerate its timetable for acquiring a suitable management information system for procurement, to ensure that its commercial decisions are informed by data. DFID should instigate a formal contract management regime, underpinned by appropriate training and guidance and supported by a senior official responsible for contract management across the department. The new regime should include appropriate adaptive contract management techniques, to ensure that supplier accountability is balanced with the need for innovation and adaptive management in pursuit of development results.

Achieving reforms in oligarchical democracies: the role of leadership and coalitions in the Philippines - Sidel, John T. (Developmental Leadership Program, 2014)
This paper examines the role of developmental leadership in two major reforms introduced in the Philippines in 2012: the passage into law in December of excise tax reform which significantly raised taxes on cigarettes and alcohol – generally referred to as the Sin Tax Reform – and, in July, the re-registration of voters in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). These reforms have a) strengthened government finances and healthcare; and b) improved the quality of elections and promoted good governance and conflict resolution in the southern Philippines. Key points: These reforms were not achieved exclusively through the executive leadership of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, this paper argues. A broader form of developmental leadership was critical to their passage into legislation and their subsequent implementation, made up of reform coalitions that incorporated elements of government, the legislature, and civil society. While these coalitions were diverse and flexible in their form and composition, their core strength came from established advocacy groups and experienced activists. These groups and activists used highly labour-intensive, specialized and complex forms of mobilization. The success of these reform coalitions, it is argued, has implications for economic and governance reform in the developing world, particularly in systems characterised by oligarchical democracy, where competition for elected office is closely linked to the entrenched interests of business and industry.

Achieving disability inclusive employment – Are the current approaches deep enough? - Shaw, Jackie; Wickenden, Mary; Thompson, Stephen; Mader, Philip (Journal of International Development, 2022)
Diverse approaches to promoting disability inclusive employment aim to transform workplaces into truly inclusive environments, usually with intervention strategies targeting two main groups: employers and jobseekers with disabilities. However, they do not always consider other relevant stakeholders or address the relationships and interactions between diverse actors in the wider social ecosystem. These approaches often neglect deeper ‘vexing’ difficulties which block progress towards disability inclusive work environments. Most interventions rightly embrace hegemonic ‘social models of disability’ and use human rights arguments but may neglect entrenched structural factors. Disability inclusive employment is complex, with unaddressed invisible aspects that continue to limit progress. We explore some key relevant disability concepts and then interrogate evidence from the ‘Inclusion Works’ programme working in four middle- and low-income countries, considering some intractable barriers underlying the slow movement towards inclusive employment. Finally, we propose that a more participatory action orientated approach involving disabled people and others is needed to both generate deeper understanding and provide pathways towards new solutions to obstinate problems through progressive action learning processes in context. Programmatic interventions that work across the levels of the ecosystem and address power relations and interactions between stakeholders could lead to more substantial forms of disability inclusive employment.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jid.3692

Accounting for a changing and uncertain climate in planning and policymaking today: lessons for developing countries - Ranger, Nicola; Garbett-Shiels, Su-Lin (Climate and Development, 2012)
Climate change is increasingly altering the pattern of climate-related risks. Developing countries and in particular least developed countries will be among the most severely impacted by climate change. These risks can seem remote in comparison with more immediate threats and needs, but if climate change is not considered upfront in existing planning and policymaking processes today, decision makers risk locking-in future impacts that may prove irreversible or much more costly and difficult to rectify than is necessary. The challenge for planners and policymakers, explored in this paper, is that future climate conditions are deeply uncertain. Decision methods are available to tackle these problems; however, these tend to be data- and resource-intensive and therefore, difficult to routinely apply. Further, a gap in currently available guidance is the explicit link to the adaptation needs of a developing country. We discuss the implications of this development context for the priorities for adaptation and the relative allocation of efforts in adaptation. This paper focuses on the identification of adaptation options and strategies that are robust to the deep uncertainties in future climate risk, culminating in a framework of six building blocks. It takes the perspective of exploring how decisions today might be adjusted to account for uncertain and changing long-term climate risks. We suggest a core principle is to focus on promoting climate-resilient development and increasing long-term adaptive capacity while, crucially, avoiding inflexible decisions that could lock-in future climate risk or foreclose adaptation options.
Keywords: Adaptation; Climate change; Development; Planning; robustness; uncertainty

Accountability, transparency, Participation, and Inclusion. A New Development Consensus? - Carothers, Thomas; Brechenmacher, Saskia (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014)
The wide-reaching consensus around the normative and instrumental value of accountability, transparency, participation, and inclusion remains less solid than enthusiasts of these concepts might wish.

Accountability Myopia: Losing Sight of Organizational Learning - Ebrahim, Alnoor (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 2005)
This article challenges a normative assumption about accountability in organizations: that more accountability is necessarily better. More specifically, it examines two forms of “myopia” that characterize conceptions of accountability among service-oriented nonprofit organizations: (a) accountability as a set of unconnected binary relationships rather than as a system of relations and (b) accountability as short-term and rule-following behavior rather than as a means to longer-term social change. The article explores the effects of these myopias on a central mechanism of accountability in organizations—evaluation—and proposes a broader view of accountability that includes organizational learning. Future directions for research and practice are elaborated.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Accountability Learning and Planning System - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2000)

Accountability ecosystems: directions of accountability and points of engagement - Halloran, Brendan (IDS, 2016)
Accountability, the obligation of those in power to take responsibility for their actions, is a process involving relationships between different actors (in state and society) and mechanisms, and is influenced by many contextual factors. Using the lens of an accountability ‘ecosystem’ focuses our attention on the complexity of accountability processes. An ‘ecosystem’ perspective suggests that simple ideas about accountability – such as citizen feedback reaching decision-makers ensures more accountability, or that greater transparency equals greater accountability – are often actually much more complex.

Accountability and Learning: Exploding the Myth of Incompatibility between Accountability and Learning - Guijt, Irene (NGO Management - The Earthscan Compendium, 2010)
When accountability is understood as reporting on pre-deined deliverables, it is often considered to be irreconcilable with learning. This conventional wisdom inhibits an appreciation of their connection. In this chapter, Irene Guijt exposes the laws and traps in reasoning that keep accountability and learning apart. She provides practitioners with principles and basic good ideas that open up prospects for accountability and learning to complement each other.
Publication Title: NGO Management

About the BEAM Exchange (BEAM Exchange, 2018)

A workshop on Doing Development Differently - CID (CID at Harvard University and ODI, 2014)
October 22-23, 2014 A workshop on Doing Development Differently Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA Hosted by the Building State Capability (BSC) program at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) with funding from the Governance Partnership Facility.

A Whole New World - Funding and Commissioning in Complexity - Knight, Annabel Davidson; Lowe, Toby; Brossard, Marion; Wilson, Julie (Collaborate & Newcastle University, 2017)
Collaborate and Newcastle University Business School Publish Research into Complexity-Friendly Funding

A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking - Jullien, Francois (University of Hawaii Press, 2004)
In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, Francois Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese stategies work in several domains (the battle-field, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and to bring about victory effortlessly. Efficacity in China is thus conceived of in terms of transformation (as opposed to action) and manipulation, making it closer to what is understood as efficacy in the West. Jullien's brilliant interpretations of an array of recondite texts are key to understanding our own conceptions of action, time, and reality in this foray into the world of Chinese thought. In its clear and penetrating characterization of two contrasting views of reality from a heretofore unexplored perspective, Treatise on Efficacy will be of central importance in the intellectual debate between East and West.

A trainer's guide for participatory learning and action - Pretty, Jules; Guijt, Irene (2002)

A top Toolkit on Adaptive Management. But is that a good idea? – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2021)

A Theory of Change of citizen participation: an update - Peña-López, Ismael (ICTlogy, 2020)
when it was reduced to a subsidiary internal service lacking all kind of political attributions. The work done in those years had been formidable, but too many things had passed since, especially the 15M Spanish Indignados Movement, the raise of technopolitics… and the raise of populism and fascism all across Europe. We urgently needed a theoretical framework in which to substantiate our political strategy, so I came up with a Theory of Change of citizen participation (see Figure 1) which defined four expected impacts of our political action: 1. Efficiency, efficacy and legitimacy of public decisions improves. 2. Populism has decreased in institutions and the public sphere. 3. Citizens understand the complexity of public decision-making. 4. Citizen participation and political engagement clearly shifts towards a technopolitical paradigm. These impacts were expected to be achieved after some outcomes resulting from some outputs grouped in five programmes: 1. Programme of citizen participation. 2. Programme of internal participation. 3. Programme of collaboration. 4. Programme of intermediaries, facilitators and infomediaries. 5. Programme of e-participation, e-voting and technopolitics. 20 months after, the Theory of Change of Citizen Participation has worked quite well. But it does have some limitations, especially at the operational level-which is what the whole thing was about, to help in putting some order in our daily work.

A Systems Framework for International Development: The Data-Layered Causal Loop Diagram - Blair, Courtney; Gralla, Erica; Wetmore, Finley; Goentzel, Jarrod; Peters, Megan (Production and Operations Management, 2021)
Meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require adapting or redirecting a variety of very complex global and local human systems. It is essential that development scholars and practitioners have tools to understand the dynamics of these systems and the key drivers of their behavior, such as barriers to progress and leverage points for driving sustainable change. System dynamics tools are well suited to address this challenge, but they must first be adapted for the data-poor and fragmented environment of development work. Our key contribution is to extend the causal loop diagram (CLD) with a data layer that describes the status of and change in each variable based on available data. By testing dynamic hypotheses against the system's actual behavior, it enables analysis of a system's dynamics and behavioral drivers without simulation. The data-layered CLD was developed through a 4-year engagement with USAID/Uganda. Its contributions are illustrated through an application to agricultural financing in Uganda. Our analysis identified a lack of demand for agricultural loans as a major barrier to broadening agricultural financing, partially refuting an existing hypothesis that access to credit was the main constraint. Our work extends system dynamics theory to meet the challenges of this practice environment, enabling analysis of the complex dynamics that are crucial to achieving the SDGs.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/poms.13492

A systematic review of adaptations of evidence-based public health interventions globally - Escoffery, Cam; Lebow-Skelley, E.; Haardoerfer, R.; Boing, E.; Udelson, H.; Wood, R.; Hartman, M.; Fernandez, M. E.; Mullen, P. D. (Implementation Science, 2018)
Adaptations of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) often occur. However, little is known about the reasons for adaptation, the adaptation process, and outcomes of adapted EBIs. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic review to answer the following questions: (1) What are the reasons for and common types of adaptations being made to EBIs in community settings as reported in the published literature? (2) What steps are described in making adaptations to EBIs? and (3) What outcomes are assessed in evaluations of adapted EBIs?

A study of the sustained uptake developmental evaluation: How does developmental evaluation work in the USAID context, what factors help and hinder its success, and what is its value to stakeholders? - Baylor, Rebecca; Fatehi, Y. K.; Esper, H. (USAID, 2019)

A spiral model of software development and enhancement - Boehm, B. W. (Computer, 1988)

A Rubric to Evaluate Citizen-Science Programs for Long-Term Ecological Monitoring - Tredick, Catherine A.; Lewison, Rebecca L.; Deutschman, Douglas H.; Hunt, Timothy ANN; Gordon, Karen L.; Von Hendy, Phoenix (BioScience, 2017)
Abstract. Citizen-science (CS) programs provide a cost-effective way to collect monitoring data over large temporal and spatial scales. Despite the recent prol

A Review and Critique of Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory as it Applies to Organizations - Lundblad, Jennifer P. (Organization Development Journal, 2003)
Num Pages: 50-64 Place: Chesterland, United States Publisher: International Society for Organization Development, Inc.

A reliability and validity study of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills—Modified - Elliot, Jacquelyn; Lee, Steven W; Tollefson, Nona (School Psychology Review, 2001)
Examined the psychometric properties of a set of preliteracy measures modified from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) with a sample of 75 kindergarten students. The modified battery (called DIBELS—M) includes measures of Letter Naming Fluency, Sound Naming Fluency, Initial Phoneme Ability, and Phonemic Segmentation Ability. These measures were assessed through repeated administrations in 2-wk intervals at the end of the kindergarten year. Results indicate interrater reliability estimates and coefficients of stability and equivalence for 3 of the measures ranged from .80 to the mid .90s with about one-half of the coefficients above .90. Correlations between DIBELS—M scores and criterion measures of phonological awareness, standardized achievement measures, and teacher ratings of achievement yielded concurrent validity coefficients ranging from .60 to .70. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that the 4 DIBELS—M measures accounted for 73% of the variance in scores on the Skills Cluster of the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery—Revised. The contributions of the study, including psychometric analysis of the DIBELS—M with a new sample and formation of composite scores, are discussed in relation to the extant literature.

A reflection on collaborative adaptation research in Africa and Asia - Cochrane, Logan; Cundill, Georgina; Ludi, Eva; New, Mark; Nicholls, Robert J.; Wester, Philippus; Cantin, Bernard; Murali, Kallur Subrammanyam; Leone, Michele; Kituyi, Evans; Landry, Marie-Eve (Regional Environmental Change, 2017)

A ‘real-time’ and anthropological response to the Ebola crisis - IDS (IDS, 2017)
Impact Summary The Ebola epidemic that began in the Guinea-Sierra Leone-Liberia border region in December 2013 spread fast through the villages, cities and trade routes of this highly-peopled,...

A problem-focused approach to violence against women: The political-economy of justice and security programming - Denney, Lisa; Domingo, Pilar (ODI, 2013)
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women ended its 57th session on 15 March 2013 with an outcome document affirming the importance of eliminating violence against women (VAW). The Commission was unable, however, to achieve consensus on a global action plan. The negative reaction of some UN member states to an action plan is a worrying reminder of ongoing resistance to reform. These persistent challenges highlight the continuing struggle to gain a serious global commitment to address VAW and recognise it as a breach of women’s fundamental human rights. Engaging in this struggle, many donors have put addressing VAW generally, and in fragile and conflictaffected situations (FCAS) specifically, at the top of the development agenda and made it a major priority of international policy. But in practice progress remains difficult, not least due to entrenched resistance and discriminatory socio-political norms and gender relations that persist in many societies. The problem of violence against women therefore needs to be addressed from the perspective of the concrete socio-political and cultural conditions that shape its particular features and the relevant context specific dynamics of conflict, post-conflict patterns of violence and fragility. International efforts to support reform in the area of VAW in FCAS need to go beyond prescriptive approaches that focus on what access to protection, justice and redress should look like. We propose here an approach that engages with the specificities of the problem – paying attention to context, and the concrete political-economy dynamics of the drivers of VAW – and takes account of the real options that

A pragmatic approach to assessing system change - Webinar (DCED, 2020)
Few topics inspire as much confusion and debate as systemic change. What is it? How do you measure it? Does it even matter? Assessing changes in systems might be more doable than you think. This webinar explored a back-to-basics approach to assessing system change. In November 2019, thirty results measurement specialists, managers and consultants got together in Bangkok. They took part in workshops on a back-to-basics approach to assessing system changes, applying it to cases from participants’ programmes. Since then, the insights from the workshop have been further developed into a pragmatic approach to assessing system changes that builds on what programmes are actually doing and learning from practice. It can be: applied by programmes using a variety of different systemic change frameworks applied across a variety of sectors implemented with internal resources using familiar methods for information gathering The speakers walked through the approach using examples from the 2019 workshop, including PRISMA in Indonesia and Skills for Jobs (S4J) in Albania.

A Pragmatic Approach to Assessing System Change: How to put it into practice - Miehlbradt, Alexandra; Shah, Rachel; Posthumus, Hans; Kessler, Adam (DCED, 2020)
Planning for and assessing system change is a strategic management issue. It is critical for everything from developing a strategy and designing interventions, to adapting strategy, improving implementation and reporting impact. But many programmes get stuck when it comes to assessing system change. The private sector development field has struggled to agree on an approach that programmes can implement and stakeholders can understand. However some mature programmes are starting to assess system change more effectively. Building on these emerging practices, this paper outlines a process that programmes can use to assess system changes regularly and practically. Two complementary papers: Overview and How to put it into practice The Overview summarises the approach and How to put it into practice provides more detailed implementation guidance, worked examples, and useful tips. The Overview explores how to: develop a system change strategy and intervention plans that lay the groundwork for system change assessment, including how to set system boundaries and how to identify the system changes a programme aims to catalyse assess system changes using both: - an intervention lens focused on changes introduced by specific interventions - a helicopter lens that provides a whole system view By analysing findings from both lenses, programmes can improve their strategy and report on their contribution to system change. How to put it into practice uses two case examples for illustration throughout the paper - PRISMA’s work in the maize system in East Java and Indonesia and S4J’s work in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) system in Albania. It targets practitioners responsible for facilitating and/or assessing system change. The paper explains how to: articulate the system changes that a programme aims to catalyse assess those changes use the results to inform decision making and reporting The approach described in the paper builds on the practices outlined in the DCED Results Measurement Standard. The guidance provided has been designed to be useful to programmes that aim to catalyse system changes whether or not they apply the DCED Standard.

A Pragmatic Approach to Assessing System Change - Posthumus, Hans; Shah, Rachel; Miehlbradt, Alexandra; Kessler, Adam (DCED, 2020)
Planning for and assessing system change is a strategic management issue. It is critical for everything from developing a strategy and designing interventions, to adapting strategy, improving implementation and reporting impact. But many programmes get stuck when it comes to assessing system change. The private sector development field has struggled to agree on an approach that programmes can implement and stakeholders can understand. However some mature programmes are starting to assess system change more effectively. Building on these emerging practices, this paper outlines a process that programmes can use to assess system changes regularly and practically. Two complementary papers: Overview and How to put it into practice The Overview summarises the approach and How to put it into practice provides more detailed implementation guidance, worked examples, and useful tips. The Overview explores how to: develop a system change strategy and intervention plans that lay the groundwork for system change assessment, including how to set system boundaries and how to identify the system changes a programme aims to catalyse assess system changes using both: - an intervention lens focused on changes introduced by specific interventions - a helicopter lens that provides a whole system view By analysing findings from both lenses, programmes can improve their strategy and report on their contribution to system change. How to put it into practice uses two case examples for illustration throughout the paper - PRISMA’s work in the maize system in East Java and Indonesia and S4J’s work in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) system in Albania. It targets practitioners responsible for facilitating and/or assessing system change. The paper explains how to: articulate the system changes that a programme aims to catalyse assess those changes use the results to inform decision making and reporting The approach described in the paper builds on the practices outlined in the DCED Results Measurement Standard. The guidance provided has been designed to be useful to programmes that aim to catalyse system changes whether or not they apply the DCED Standard.

A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum - Woodward, Elizabeth; Surdek, Steffan; Ganis, Matthew (IBM Press, 2010)
Succeed with Scrum in Even the Largest, Most Complex Distributed Development Projects Forewords by Ken Schwaber, Scott Ambler, Roman Pichler, and Matthew Wang This is the first comprehensive, practical guide for Scrum practitioners working in large-scale distributed environments. Written by three of IBM’s leading Scrum practitioners–in close collaboration with the IBM QSE Scrum Community of more than 1000 members worldwide–this book offers specific, actionable guidance for everyone who wants to succeed with Scrum in the enterprise. Readers will follow a journey through the lifecycle of a distributed Scrum project, from envisioning products and setting up teams to preparing for Sprint planning and running retrospectives. Each chapter presents a baseline drawn from “conventional” Scrum, then discusses additional issues faced by distributed teams, and presents specific best-practice solutions, alternatives, and tips the authors have identified through hard, empirical experience. Using real-world examples, the book demonstrates how to apply key Scrum practices, such as look-ahead planning in geographically distributed environments. Readers will also gain valuable new insights into the agile management of complex problem and technical domains. Coverage includes• Developing user stories and working with Product Owners as a distributed team• Recognizing and fixing the flaws Scrum may reveal in existing processes• Engaging in more efficient Release and Sprint planning• Conducting intense, brief daily Scrum meetings in distributed environments• Managing cultural and language differences• Resolving dependencies, performing frequent integration, and maintaining transparency in geographically distributed environments• Successfully running remote software reviews and demos• Brainstorming what worked and what didn’t, to improve future Sprints This book will be an indispensable resource for every team leader, member, product owner, or manager working with Scrum or other agile methods in any distributed software development organization.

A Practical Guide for Collective Action against Corruption - UN Global Compact (UN Global Compact, 2015)
All anti-corruption professionals looking to better understand the relationship between collective action and corruption should refer to these two comprehensive guides that the UN Global Compact published. The 2015 guide has modules that cover theoretical concepts, practical recommendations for undertaking CA initiatives, and multiple in-depth case studies of CA projects around the world.

A Political Economy Analysis Framework for EdTech Evidence Uptake - Pellini, Arnaldo; Nicolai, Susan; Magee, Arran; Sharp, Sam; Wilson, Sam (The EdTech Hub, 2021)

A New Policy Narrative for Pastoralism? Pastoralists as Reliability Professionals and Pastoralist Systems as Infrastructure - Roe, Emery (ESRC STEPS Centre, 2020)
This paper proposes that pastoralist systems are better treated, in aggregate, as a global critical infrastructure. The policy and management implications that follow are significant and differ importantly from current pastoralist policies and recommendations. A multi-typology framework is presented, identifying the conditions under which pastoralists can be considered real-time reliability professionals in systems with mandates preventing or otherwise avoiding key events from happening. The framework leads to a different policy-relevant counternarrative to pastoralism as understood today. Some features of the counternarrative are already known or have been researched. The paper’s aim is to provoke further work (including case research and interactions with decisionmakers) on how robust the counternarrative is as a policy narrative for recasting today’s pastoralist policy and management interventions.
Accepted: 2020-01-14T10:22:59Z

A new pathway: how can funders support meaningful monitoring, evaluation, and learning practice in the field? - Blog post on Better Evaluation - Acevedo, Andrea; Colnar, Megan (2023)
How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

A new bird's eye view on the agile forest (2022 update) - Portman, Henny (PM World Journal, 2020)
Some years ago, you could say “Scrum is agile” and ask “is Agile Scrum?” Now we know there is much more flesh on the bones. At this moment there are more than fifty known and less known agile approaches, frameworks or methods available. To get a first impression of the different approaches, I try to bring some structure in the jungle to approaches, methods and frameworks. In Figure 1, I position the best-known agile approaches in a structure. The approaches, frameworks or methods are positioned within the 'One-time programs / projects' sections or within 'Business as usual’ / indefinite, or both. On the other side the approaches, frameworks or methods are clustered around team, product or programme and portfolio level. In the dark blue boxes in Figure 1 we see agile approaches that are only applicable in IT-focused organizations. All other approaches can be used within IT and non-IT-oriented organizations (light blue coloured). I haven’t mapped all the known approaches, frameworks and methods in this figure, and to be honest, I think there is a lot of duplication and probably commercial drivers play a role too to ‘develop’ the next kid on the block without added value in comparison with the existing approaches, frameworks or methods. The team level, including Scrum and Kanban, is applicable in both IT-oriented and non-IT-oriented products and services development and operations. The engineering level focuses specifically on IT-oriented product development. The one-time, temporary projects and programme frameworks and methods are suitable for both IT and non-IT. The permanent umbrella frameworks (both product-targeted and team-targeted) focus specifically on IT and product development and the Culture-targeted approaches help organisations to increase their agility.

A new bird's eye view on the agile forest - Portman, Henny (PM World Journal, 2020)

A Movements Perspective on Transparency and Accountability - Joyce, Mary; Walker, Tom (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)
This Think Piece describes social movements pursuing government accountability and the challenges and opportunities to supporting them.

A mini-primer of critical systems heuristics. - Ulrich, W. (2005)
"Critical Systems Heuristics," also just called "Critical Heuristics" or "CSH," is a framework for reflective practice based on practical philosophy and systems thinking. The basic idea of CSH is to support boundary critique – a systematic effort of handling boundary judgments critically. Boundary judgments determine which empirical observations and value considerations count as relevant and which others are left out or are considered less important. Because they condition both "facts" and "values," boundary judgments play an essential role when it comes to assessing the meaning and merits of a claim. Their systematic discussion can help bridge differences of perspectives across disciplines and between experts and non-experts. They also lend themselves to a specific critical employment, called emancipatory boundary critique, against claims that do not uncover their underlying boundary assumptions. CSH can thus serve as a tool for coproducing knowledge as well as for critical and emancipatory purposes on the part of people concerned by, but not necessarily involved in, the definition of relevant facts and values.

A market system by any other name would smell as sweet - Kessler, Adam; Conroy, Kevin (BEAM Exchange, 2019)
How does Doing Development Differently (DDD) and Problem Driven Iterative Adaption (PDIA) connect to core principles of the MSD approach?

A Manifesto for the Platform Organization - Cicero, Simone; Quintarelli, Emanuele; Ruggeri, Luca (Boundaryless, 2024)
Discover the future of organizational structure with the Platform Organization Manifesto. Our guiding principles provide a blueprint for dynamic, adaptable businesses designed to thrive in a constantly changing marketplace. Harness the power of entrepreneurial spirit, cooperation, innovation, and key design principles to empower corporate evolution.

A Low-resource Aware Framework for ICT Service Development in Rural Africa - Bon, Anna; Gordijn, Jaap; Akkermans, Hans (Proceedings of the CAiSE'16 Forum, 2016)
Technological innovation and information & communication technologies (ICTs) are considered enabling factors for social and economic development, even in very poor parts of the world. However,...

A leaders's guide to after-action reviews - U.S. Army (Department of the Army, 1993)
An after-action review (AAR) is a professional discussion of an event, focused on performance standards, that enables soldiers to discover for themselves what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses. It is a tool leaders and units can use to get maximum benefit from every mission or task. It provides- • Candid insights into specific soldier, leader, and unit strengths and weaknesses from various perspectives. • Feedback and insight critical to battle-focused training. • Details often lacking in evaluation reports alone. Evaluation is the basis for the commander's unit-training assessment. No commander, no matter how skilled, will see as much as the individual soldiers and leaders who actually conduct the training. Leaders can better correct deficiencies and sustain strengths by carefully evaluating and comparing soldier, leader, and unit performance against the standard. The AAR is the keystone of the evaluation process. Feedback compares the actual output of a process with the intended outcome. By focusing on the task's standards and by describing specific observations, leaders and soldiers identify strengths and weaknesses and together decide how to improve their performances. This shared learning improves task proficiency and promotes unit bonding and esprit. Squad and platoon leaders will use the information to develop input for unittraining plans. The AAR is a valid and valuable technique regardless of branch, echelon, or training task. Of course, AARs are not cure-alls for unit-training problems. Leaders must still make on-the-spot corrections and take responsibility for training their soldiers and units. However, AARs are a key part of the training process. The goal is to improve soldier, leader, and unit performance. The result is a more cohesive and proficient fighting force. Because soldiers and leaders participating in an AAR actively discover what happened and why, they learn and remember more than they would from a critique alone. A critique only gives one viewpoint and frequently provides little opportunity for discussion of events by participants. Soldier observations and comments may not be encouraged. The climate of the critique, focusing only on what is wrong, prevents candid discussion of training events and stifles learning and team building.

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making - Snowden, Dave; Boone, Mary E. (Harvard Business Review, 2007)

A Holistic Approach to Evaluating Research - Ofir, Zenda; Schwandt, Thomas; Duggan, Colleen; McLean, Robert (IDRC, 2016)

A guide to Social Return on Investment - Nicholls, Jeremy; Lawlor, Eilis; Neitzert, Eva; Goodspeed, Tim (The SROI Network, 2012)
There is increasing recognition that we need better ways to account for the social, economic and environmental value that results from our activities. The language varies – ‘impact’, ‘returns’, ‘benefit’, ‘value’ – but the questions around what sort of difference and how much of a difference we are making are the same. Understanding and managing this broader value is becoming increasingly important for the public and private sectors alike. This is true whether it is civil society organisations working to create value, Governments commissioning and investing in activities to create social value, investors seeking to ensure that their investments will make a difference, or private businesses recognising both risk and opportunity in the wider effects of operations. All this means that it is also more important that we have some consistency and a shared language when we talk about value. SROI is the application of a set of principles within a framework that is designed to help bring about that consistency, whilst at the same time recognising that what is of value will be very different for different people in different situations and cultures. The first edition of this guide, which itself built on the work of three earlier SROI guides1, was prepared as part of a three year programme on measuring social value funded in 2008 by the then ‘Office of the Third Sector’ based in the Cabinet Office of the UK Government. This was delivered by a consortium of organisations: the SROI Network, nef (the new economics foundation), Charities Evaluation Services, the National Council for Voluntary Organsations and New Philanthropy Capital. In addition to this programme, the Scottish Government also supported the development of SROI, including a database of indicators to support SROI analysis. The work of the SROI Network now stretches across many different countries and continents, and this second edition of the guide reflects that interest. We have though decided to use only one currency symbol, for reasons of clarity and consistency, and so have continued to use £. However, readers will be able to find examples in various currencies and translations of the Guide on our website. For more information on the developments of SROI, please refer to the SROI Network website: www.thesroinetwork.org

A Guide to Peer-to-Peer Learning - Andrews, Matt; Manning, Nick (Effective Institutions Platform, 2016)

A guide to monitoring and evaluating policy influence - Jones, Harry (ODI, 2011)

A Guide to Digital Feedback Loops. An approach to strengthening program outcomes through data for decision making - Whittle, Dennis; Campbell, Megan (USAID, 2019)
Feedback is information about what happens as a result of what you do. Using that information to adapt what you do or how you do it creates what is called a feedback loop. A digital feedback loop uses digital technology at some stage of the feedback loop. Digital feedback loops help USAID missions improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their activities and can support partner countries on their journey to self-reliance through increased information sharing and improved government and civil society capacity. USAID missions and their partners have used digital feedback loops to improve HIV treatment targeting in Zimbabwe, engage three million young people in Nigeria in policy, and reduce field reporting times from one month to one day. Digital feedback loops provide access to information faster and more cheaply than ever before. As part of an adaptive management approach, digital feedback loops increase our ability to act on opportunities and respond to challenges. That in turn can improve outcomes and reduce the risk of waste and failure. This guide outlines the case for integrating digital feedback loops into your work, and provides tools, resources and guiding questions to support you as you get started. The guide includes examples of how USAID missions are using digital feedback loops to improve their programs in various sectors and provides worksheets to help you apply digital feedback loops to your own context.

A Guide to Assessing the Political Economy of Domestic Climate Change Governance - Worker, Jesse; Palmer, Niki (World Resources Institute, 2021)
This paper discusses how understanding the domestic political economy of climate governance is critical for developing informed strategies to build and sustain political ambition. It provides guidance and a methodology for domestic stakeholders to determine the types of institutional reforms, incentives, coalitions, and policy design that can entrench long-term political support for climate ambition. The assessment can also help users identify political barriers to more equitable climate action and identify reforms that may strengthen inclusion and accountability. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Highlights ▪ There is overwhelming evidence of the social, economic, and environmental case to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and rapidly scale up adaptation. Yet, despite a proliferation of climate laws and policies over the last 10–15 years, emissions are still rising, and adaptation needs remain urgent. ▪ This calls for a more sophisticated assessment of the political economy factors that may enable or constrain implementation of policies and actions and sustain political commitment at the country level. ▪ This guide offers an assessment methodology to understand how structural factors, rules and norms, stakeholders and interests, and ideas and narratives influence the political economy of climate action in a given country context. ▪ The methodology was developed on the basis of climate policy, governance, and political economy literature with contributions from subject matter experts. ▪ We intend the assessment to support civil society coalitions, reform-minded civil servants and politicians, international organizations, and other stakeholders. ▪ The resulting analysis should deepen the understanding of context while informing the advocacy, policy design, coalition building, capacity building, and communications of domestic stakeholders.

A Guide To Agile Project Management Methodology & Tools - Aston, Ben (The Digital Project Manager, 2020)
Looking to brush-up on agile? Here's your complete guide to agile project management, agile principles and key components, and the best agile tools for 2020.

A guide to agile communication - Defra digital - DEFRA Digital (Departmetn for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (UK), 2018)
This guide is intended for: people planning communications activity on behalf of agile teams people doing the communications activity (especially blogging, presenting, or filmmaking) people who manage the people described above, who want to understand what they're doing and why The government service standard encourages teams to work in the open as much as possible, echoing item 10 in the government design principles, “make things open, it makes them better”. This guide was written to help teams do just that.

A Governance Practitioner’s Notebook: Alternative Ideas and Approaches - Whaites, Alan; Gonzalez, Eduardo; Fyson, Sara; Teskey, Graham (OECD, 2015)
The Governance Practitioner’s Notebook takes an unusual approach for the OECD-DAC Network on Governance (GovNet). It brings together a collection of specially written notes aimed at those who work as governance practitioners within development agencies. It does so, however, without attempting to offer definitive guidance – instead aiming to stimulate thinking and debate. To aid this process the book is centred on a fictional Governance Adviser. The Notebook’s format provides space for experts to speak on today’s governance issues: politics, public sector reform and stakeholder engagement. It encourages debate, charts the evolution of donor thinking, and highlights future challenges in the age of the Sustainable Development Goals. Each section introduces both technical issues and major areas of debate, providing ideas for future development support to institutional reform.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

A Framework for Freshwater Ecosystem Management - UN Enviornment (2018)

A flowering of approaches to complexity and development? - Thorpe, Ian (KM on a dollar a day, 2015)
We are an important juncture in development at the moment with the Sustainable Development Goals due to be finalized later this year, and with discussion now turning full swing into what needs to h…

A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas - Ostrom, E. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007)

A developmental Evaluation Primer - Gamble, Jamie A.A. (J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, 2008)

A Critique of the Claims About Mobile Phones and Kerala Fisherman. The Importance of the Context of Complex Social Systems - Steyn, Jacques (The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2016)
This paper challenges some fundamental aspects of research and conclusions relating to the use of technology for community development. Views of technology, in this case the mobile phone, as a tool for increased economic welfare are often skewed due to extreme reductionism, ambiguous interview questions and poor data sources. Research of complex social systems or sub-systems give the wrong answers when reductionist methodologies are used. To demonstrate such shortcomings, the 2007 paper of Robert Jensen serves as an example. His conclusion that mobile phones enable Kerala fishermen to increase their economic welfare is the most cited paper on ICT4D topics, but there are fundamental methodological and logical problems with the claim, while other research came to contradictory conclusions. This critique is presented on many levels: ideological, paradigmatic, methodology, logical, statistical and semantic.

A conceptual map of political participation - van Deth, Jan W. (Acta Politica, 2014)
How would you recognize a mode of participation if you see one? Owing to the rapid expansion of political activities in the last decades this question has become increasingly difficult to answer. Neither the development of all-embracing nominal definitions, nor deductive analyses of existing modes of participation seem to be helpful. In addition, the spread of expressive modes of participation makes it hard to avoid purely subjective definitions. The aim of this discussion paper is to develop an operational definition of political participation, which allows us to cover distinct conceptualizations systematically, efficiently and consistently. This goal can only be arrived at if the conventional approach of presenting nominal definitions to solve conceptual problems is left behind. Instead, available definitions are included in a set of decision rules to distinguish three main variants of political participation. A fourth variant is distinguished for non-political activities used for political purposes. Together, the four variants of political participation cover the whole range of political participation systematically without excluding any mode of political participation unknown yet. At the same time, the endless expansion of the modes of political participation in modern democracies does not result in an endless conceptual expansion. Implications for research and various examples are discussed.

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes - Pahl-Wostl, Claudia (Global Environmental Change, 2009)
Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific. First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.
Keywords: Adaptive capacity; Adaptive governance; Climate change adaptation; Complexity; Institutions; Resource management; Social learning

A Call for Innovation in International Development - R4D (Results for Development, 2015)

A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) - Ulrich, Werner (2005)

A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews - Fletcher, Angus; Cline, Preston B.; Hoffman, Matthew (Harvard Business Review, 2023)
In the decades since the Army created the After Action Review (AAR), businesses have embraced the practice as a way of learning from both failure and success. But all too often the practice gets reduced to nothing more than a pro forma exercise. The authors of this article describe the history and philosophy of the original AAR, debunk three myths about the practice that impede its proper use, and finally suggest three improvements that can help business leaders make the most of it.
Section: Collaboration and teams
Keywords: Collaboration and teams; Crisis management; Project management

6 Reviewing research evidence - NICE (6. Developing NICE guidelines: the manual, 2012)

5 reflections on operationalising CLARISSA to generate evidence - Neupane, Sudarshan (CLARISSA, 2021)
As we start a new year, and especially, as 2021 is the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, understanding that the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL) is complex is step one – there are no simple solutions. But we must go deeper than that, we must ensure that the programmes designed to intervene, and shape policy take on that complexity and precariousness. This is where the experience of the Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) programme comes in. It is uniquely set up to generate evidence in innovative ways and to co-develop with our stakeholders’ solutions to the WFCL. This is ambitious, yes, but no one said it was going to be easy.

5 Principles to Guide Adaptive Leadership - Ramalingam, Ben; Nabarro, David; Oqubuy, Arkebe; Carnall, Dame Ruth; Wild, Leni (Harvard Business Review, 2020)
How you respond to a crisis will have repercussions for years to come. The Covid-19 pandemic is constantly evolving, with leaders facing unpredictability, imperfect information, multiple unknowns, and the need to identify responses quickly — all while recognizing the multi-dimensional (health-related, economic, social, political, cultural) nature of the crisis. Responding to the crisis requires adaptive leadership, which involves what we refer to as the 4 A’s: Anticipation of likely future needs, trends and options. Articulation of these needs to build collective understanding and support for action. Adaptation so that there is continuous learning and the adjustment of responses as necessary. Accountability, including maximum transparency in decision-making processes and openness to challenges and feedback.
Keywords: Crisis management; Leadership

5 Emerging Lessons from new research into Empowerment and Accountability in Messy Places - Gaventa, John (From Poverty to Power, 2019)
Research guru John Gaventa summarizes the emerging lessons from a new research programme on 'action for empowerment and accountability' in messy places

40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes - Smith, Craig (2014)
My presentation from Scrum Australia 2014 called “40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes” is available on Slideshare. With 73% of the world using Scrum as their predominant Agile method, this session will …

40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes - Smith, Craig (2015)

3 things that are enabling the UNDP’s shift to portfolios - Begovic, Milica (Medium, 2023)
By Millie Begovic, Head of the UNDP Strategic Innovation Unit

3. Reflections and directions: a personal note - Chambers, Robert (Participatory Learning and Action 50: Critical reflections, future directions, 2004)

3 fallacies of embracing complexity - Ang, Yuen Yuen (UNDP Blog, 2018)
Global development is seeing an exciting paradigm shift. Increasingly, leaders and practitioners recognize that development is not a “complicated” challenge that can be neatly parsed out into separate problems and siloed departments, like assembling a car. Rather, the various tasks of development—poverty eradication, improving governance, climate action, gender equality, and so on—are all connected, making development a “complex” challenge.