Developmental Evaluation for Innovation Programmes Training Course

Course overview

Innovation programmes in development and humanitarian settings rarely follow a stable plan. Pilot approaches change after community feedback, partnerships evolve, political conditions shift, and promising ideas may need to be adapted, paused or stopped. Conventional monitoring frameworks can report activities and outputs, but often fail to help programme teams understand how change is emerging, why an intervention is working differently across locations, and what decisions should follow. This course equips practitioners to use Developmental Evaluation (DE) when learning and adaptation are central to programme success.

Participants learn how to position an evaluator as an embedded learning partner while maintaining credible, ethical evidence practices. The course covers DE principles, systems thinking, adaptive theories of change, evaluative questions for innovation, developmental monitoring, rapid feedback loops, contribution analysis, outcome harvesting and sensemaking. Participants practise selecting fit-for-purpose evidence sources, designing learning-oriented data collection, facilitating reflection with stakeholders, documenting adaptation decisions and communicating evidence to programme leadership, donors and implementing partners.

Teaching combines instructor-led method sessions with a running case on an adaptive humanitarian innovation programme. Teams build a Developmental Evaluation framework for a live or realistic initiative, including an innovation hypothesis, learning agenda, stakeholder map, evidence plan, feedback cycle, adaptation log and reporting approach. Each participant leaves with a practical DE design pack that can be refined for use in their own programme, plus templates for developmental monitoring and structured sensemaking.

The course is designed for monitoring, evaluation, research, learning and programme professionals working on complex, uncertain or rapidly evolving interventions. It is particularly relevant where managers need timely evidence to improve an innovation, rather than a retrospective judgement after delivery has ended.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Differentiate Developmental Evaluation from formative, summative and performance monitoring approaches using programme decision contexts
• Construct an adaptive theory of change that identifies assumptions, feedback loops and plausible pathways of change
• Develop a Developmental Evaluation learning agenda with prioritised evaluative questions and decision users
• Map system actors, relationships and contextual influences using stakeholder and causal-loop mapping techniques
• Design a fit-for-purpose evidence plan combining developmental monitoring, qualitative inquiry and rapid feedback methods
• Apply outcome harvesting and contribution analysis to test emerging outcomes and credible contribution claims
• Facilitate structured sensemaking sessions that convert evidence into documented adaptation decisions
• Produce a Developmental Evaluation design pack containing an evidence matrix, feedback cycle, adaptation log and reporting format

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Managers — who need to design evidence systems for adaptive and innovative programmes
• Programme Managers — who must make defensible course corrections as pilots generate new evidence
• Innovation Portfolio Managers — who oversee multiple experiments and need comparable learning across initiatives
• Humanitarian Programme Coordinators — who manage interventions in volatile settings where plans and assumptions change rapidly
• Evaluation Consultants — who want to deliver embedded, utilisation-focused evaluations for complex interventions
• Donor Programme Officers — who commission adaptive programmes and need proportionate accountability and learning arrangements

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical familiarity with project or programme monitoring and evaluation, including indicators, theories of change, data collection methods and basic results frameworks. Experience contributing to a logframe, MEL plan, evaluation, learning review or programme adaptation process is strongly recommended. Participants should also be comfortable discussing evidence with programme colleagues and working with simple spreadsheets. No prior Developmental Evaluation qualification, statistical software expertise, coding ability or advanced quantitative analysis is required. A laptop with spreadsheet and document-editing software is useful for the design workshops, but specialist evaluation software is not assumed.

Training methodology

The five-day programme alternates focused instructor-led inputs with applied design work. Participants analyse an innovation case, critique conventional monitoring arrangements, build causal-loop and stakeholder maps, draft evidence tools, and practise outcome harvesting interviews and sensemaking facilitation. Small groups work through changing programme scenarios that require an evidence-based adaptation decision. The final day is an application workshop: participants assemble and peer-review a Developmental Evaluation design pack for their own programme or a supplied case, then prepare a 90-day implementation plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Developmental Evaluation foundations and fit

• Developmental Evaluation purpose, principles and evaluator roles
• Complexity, emergence and non-linear change in innovation programmes
• Distinguishing Developmental Evaluation from formative and summative evaluation
• Matching evaluation approaches to innovation stage and decision context
• Utilisation-focused evaluation and identification of primary intended users
• Adaptive management cycles and evaluative feedback loops
• Ethical boundaries of embedded evaluator participation

Workshop: Participants diagnose a humanitarian innovation case and produce a decision-context map showing where Developmental Evaluation adds value.

Day 2: Framing change in complex systems

• Adaptive theories of change and innovation hypotheses
• Critical assumptions, uncertainty statements and testable propositions
• Stakeholder mapping for influence, incentives and affected groups
• Causal-loop diagrams for reinforcing and balancing feedback
• System boundaries, context scanning and external drivers
• Equity, power and participation in developmental inquiry
• Developmental evaluative questions and learning agendas

Workshop: Teams create an adaptive theory of change, stakeholder map and prioritised learning agenda for the case programme.

Day 3: Developmental evidence and data collection

• Fit-for-purpose evidence standards for adaptive decisions
• Developmental monitoring indicators and signal tracking
• Outcome harvesting steps and outcome statement quality criteria
• Contribution analysis for emerging causal claims
• Rapid qualitative methods including observation, interviews and feedback capture
• Evidence matrices linking questions, sources, methods and decisions
• Data quality, safeguarding and informed consent in real-time learning

Workshop: Participants build an evidence matrix and conduct a simulated outcome-harvesting interview to produce verified outcome statements.

Day 4: Sensemaking, adaptation and reporting

• Sensemaking protocols for interpreting mixed evidence
• Facilitating reflection sessions with programme teams and partners
• Triangulation of monitoring data, narratives and contextual intelligence
• Decision logs and adaptation registers
• Testing rival explanations and managing confirmation bias
• Developmental dashboards and concise learning products
• Communicating uncertainty, negative findings and emergent outcomes to donors

Workshop: Groups facilitate a timed sensemaking workshop and produce an adaptation decision log supported by an evidence trail.

Day 5: Building the Developmental Evaluation design pack

• Developmental Evaluation terms of reference and governance arrangements
• Evaluator independence, embeddedness and conflict-of-interest management
• Sequencing feedback cycles with programme planning and review points
• Resourcing developmental inquiry, facilitation and data management
• Integrating DE with logframes, MEL plans and donor reporting requirements
• Quality assurance criteria for Developmental Evaluation products
• Ninety-day implementation planning and stakeholder buy-in

Workshop: Participants assemble, peer-review and present a complete Developmental Evaluation design pack and a 90-day rollout plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, NVivo, OECD DAC Evaluation Criteria, USAID Collaborating, Learning and Adapting Framework

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions