Please allow me to introduce the Scaling Community of Practice (CoP), a voluntary network of development and climate change professionals who are working to achieve impact at scale. The CoP was founded in 2015 by Larry Cooley and Johannes Linn as a platform for sharing scaling experience and learning across sectors, and has grown to over 2000 members from around the world. The CoP's mission is to integrate, distill and consolidate scaling expertise with a view to improving the quality of scaling efforts and encouraging more development and climate actors to adopt a scaling mindset and best practices.
All are welcome to join the CoP and its affiliated working groups:
Agriculture and Rural Development
Climate Change
Education
Fragile States
Health
Mainstreaming
Monitoring and Evaluation
Nutrition
The CoP has produced a number of reports which may be of interest to EvalForward colleagues. The reports can be accessed here. The 2022 report on Scaling Principles and Lessons (Kohl and Linn) may be of particular interest. It is intended to respond to the need for a concise statement of scaling principles and lessons that apply broadly across sectoral areas and are designed to help guide development practitioners. The paper presents eight scaling principles and 21 lessons that unpack those principles, grouped under six broad questions about how to address the scaling challenge.
The 2019 Scale Up Sourcebook (Cooley and Howard) focuses on scaling in the agriculture sector, specifically in international agricultural research and development programs. Chapter 6, "Tailoring Metrics, Monitoring, and Evaluation to Support Sustainable Outcomes at Scale" notes, e.g., relevant to the questions guiding this discussion:
..." relatively few research or pilot projects generate the critical information needed to go beyond proof of concept and provide a basis for assessing scalability, streamlining delivery, informing advocacy, and guiding scaling. Increasingly, however, scaling experience demonstrates that the following three overlapping but different types or tiers of information are needed:
Tier 1 information is generated to test the efficacy of interventions, often under controlled or semi-controlled conditions.
Tier 2 information is used to refine, simplify, and adapt interventions to real-life policy, financial, and operational considerations.
Tier 3 information is generated during the scaling process to monitor fidelity and inform needed adjustments to intervention design and scaling strategy during the scaling process."
It is tempting to view these tiers as a sequence of information needs over time as the focus of scaling moves from effectiveness to efficiency to expansion. However, experience suggests the need to incorporate efficiency and expansion considerations, and to test results under realistic conditions, at the earliest possible time rather than to defer these issues until proof of concept is well established. To do otherwise is to run serious risk of adding to the graveyard of “proven” but unscalable technologies."
Further, one of the key background documents (and brand new - 2024) cited for this discussion was developed by another co-author of the CoP's Agriculture and Rural Development Working Group, Lennart Woltering, Stuck on Scale: Rethinking Scaling and Systems Change for AR4D.
Woltering says that "AR4D organizations are largely stuck in simplistic, linear, and techno-centric notions of how change happens which is manifested by the omnipresent notion of scaling innovations." He argues that a 'systems approach (instead of a linear approach) is needed instead to address the persistent complex problems such as food insecurity and poverty, and to better understand how food systems can transform to become more environmentally sustainable, contribute to food security and improve economic equity.'
My take-away is that our current M&E practices are inadequate to address even the more simplistic, linear view of scaling - let alone the critically important systems dimensions discussed by Woltering.
I am glad that EvalForward has convened this discussion to allow us to put our heads together to work on improving M&E related to scaling in AR4D. I look forward to reading and contributing to the discussion in the weeks ahead. And - in the meantime- a warm welcome to all to join the Scaling CoP!
RE: Evaluating Scaling Efforts: Measuring What Matters
United States of America
Julie Howard
Independent Consultant
Posted on 13/12/2024
Hello everyone,
Please allow me to introduce the Scaling Community of Practice (CoP), a voluntary network of development and climate change professionals who are working to achieve impact at scale. The CoP was founded in 2015 by Larry Cooley and Johannes Linn as a platform for sharing scaling experience and learning across sectors, and has grown to over 2000 members from around the world. The CoP's mission is to integrate, distill and consolidate scaling expertise with a view to improving the quality of scaling efforts and encouraging more development and climate actors to adopt a scaling mindset and best practices.
All are welcome to join the CoP and its affiliated working groups:
Agriculture and Rural Development
Climate Change
Education
Fragile States
Health
Mainstreaming
Monitoring and Evaluation
Nutrition
The CoP has produced a number of reports which may be of interest to EvalForward colleagues. The reports can be accessed here. The 2022 report on Scaling Principles and Lessons (Kohl and Linn) may be of particular interest. It is intended to respond to the need for a concise statement of scaling principles and lessons that apply broadly across sectoral areas and are designed to help guide development practitioners. The paper presents eight scaling principles and 21 lessons that unpack those principles, grouped under six broad questions about how to address the scaling challenge.
The 2019 Scale Up Sourcebook (Cooley and Howard) focuses on scaling in the agriculture sector, specifically in international agricultural research and development programs. Chapter 6, "Tailoring Metrics, Monitoring, and Evaluation to Support Sustainable Outcomes at Scale" notes, e.g., relevant to the questions guiding this discussion:
..." relatively few research or pilot projects generate the critical information needed to go beyond proof of concept and provide a basis for assessing scalability, streamlining delivery, informing advocacy, and guiding scaling. Increasingly, however, scaling experience demonstrates that the following three overlapping but different types or tiers of information are needed:
Tier 1 information is generated to test the efficacy of interventions, often under controlled or semi-controlled conditions.
Tier 2 information is used to refine, simplify, and adapt interventions to real-life policy, financial, and operational considerations.
Tier 3 information is generated during the scaling process to monitor fidelity and inform needed adjustments to intervention design and scaling strategy during the scaling process."
It is tempting to view these tiers as a sequence of information needs over time as the focus of scaling moves from effectiveness to efficiency to expansion. However, experience suggests the need to incorporate efficiency and expansion considerations, and to test results under realistic conditions, at the earliest possible time rather than to defer these issues until proof of concept is well established. To do otherwise is to run serious risk of adding to the graveyard of “proven” but unscalable technologies."
Further, one of the key background documents (and brand new - 2024) cited for this discussion was developed by another co-author of the CoP's Agriculture and Rural Development Working Group, Lennart Woltering, Stuck on Scale: Rethinking Scaling and Systems Change for AR4D.
Woltering says that "AR4D organizations are largely stuck in simplistic, linear, and techno-centric notions of how change happens which is manifested by the omnipresent notion of scaling innovations." He argues that a 'systems approach (instead of a linear approach) is needed instead to address the persistent complex problems such as food insecurity and poverty, and to better understand how food systems can transform to become more environmentally sustainable, contribute to food security and improve economic equity.'
My take-away is that our current M&E practices are inadequate to address even the more simplistic, linear view of scaling - let alone the critically important systems dimensions discussed by Woltering.
I am glad that EvalForward has convened this discussion to allow us to put our heads together to work on improving M&E related to scaling in AR4D. I look forward to reading and contributing to the discussion in the weeks ahead. And - in the meantime- a warm welcome to all to join the Scaling CoP!