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Business opportunities and support services (BOSS) - Final evaluation

eval_number:

2622

eval_url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/eval/2622

lessons_learned:

themes:

theme:

Programme implementation

category:

Organizational issues

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comments:

Project management, market actors, and IADE would have been the direct users of a program-wide M4P approach. Similarly, the implementers, partners, and market actors would be the direct users in future programs.

challenges:

Mainstreaming M4P in project management requires high capacity staff and intricate coordination between a project’s many moving parts. It also requires painstaking documentation and monitoring and evaluation. These can only be accommodated if a project has planned, budgeted, and staffed for it from the beginning, which takes organizational and donor buy in.

success:

Cohesion and sustainability are positive factors of an M4P approach to implementation. Applying the DCED standard provides a well-documented evidence base for decision making, as well as deeper learning at project end.

context:

Adaptive management and iterative program design are major strengths of the M4P approach to program management and the DCED Standard for Results Measurement. BOSS drew from these frameworks in its value chain work, and aligning implementation of the other project components with them would have allowed for more cohesive, insightful, and adaptive management of the project as a whole. Facilitation, rather than direct delivery, in implementation is another strength of the M4P approach, which promotes sustainability of project results. BOSS’s BDS work also utilised a facilitation approach, and this would have naturally fit with an overarching M4P framework.

description:

BOSS’s Immediate Objectives were achieved through the implementation of project components that were managed quite separately from one another. At the overall program level, BOSS did not regularly reflect on the overall causal logic or make adjustments to it. The lesson learned is that applying a program-wide M4P approach could integrate program management across interventions, even if implemented by separate entities. This maximises the relevance and learning between interventions and will ultimately support broader, more sustainable impacts. Regular, program-level strategic review meetings and workshops to gauge project progress on impact, effectiveness, and needed course-correction could have strengthened cohesion and synergies across BOSS’s interventions.

administrative_issues:

In order to implement M4P programming in earnest, ILO will need to design programmes that can accommodate the requisite mechanisms. An M4P programme depends heavily on sufficient technical expertise, as well as heavy M&E. Because it is difficult to build sufficient market development expertise within any one programme, ILO might consider building regional or global cross-programme expertise if it plans to take on multiple market development programmes.

url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/lessons/222060

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location:

country:

East Timor

region:

Asia and the Pacific

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eval_title:

Business opportunities and support services (BOSS) - Final evaluation