Conventional summative evaluation practice involving the use of before-after measurement of results provides information on the outcomes of an intervention. Such measurement tells us nothing about the process that connected the outputs to the inputs and therefore provides no insights into why a particular outcome was achieved. It is commonly presumed that simply replicating the same inputs under similar conditions will consistently produce the same output. But practically the next social and environmental setting will never be exactly the same and, even if it were, intervening forces would almost always change the outcome. So knowing only the result provides no guidance regarding how future performance might be improved. It is the process documentation that could help then! Process documentation exercises greatly deepen perspectives on the context and meaning of development action.
Project implementing agencies and some personnel of resource agencies often lack necessary skills of documenting and reporting their own achievements in the projects. Analyzing the situations, the processes of interventions made and the achievements/ outputs is difficult task for the project personnel. During the implementation of development projects various case studies and success stories generate that can not only reveal the processes of execution but also give rise to many learnings. But these case studies and success stories remain undocumented due to the lack of necessary skills at the part of organization. Residential training imparts skills of documenting the processes involved during the implementation of projects, preparing varied types of documents e.g. quarterly/six-monthly progress reports, annual report of organization, folder, photo book, etc. Training program will also impart skills of how to research for and write the case studies and success stories. |
