Planning (and Evaluation) (2024)

This section outlines a basic planning process that may be used for many different kinds of planning – developing strategy, or programme and project planning. Section 3 above has outlined an approach, based on the Logical Framework Approach, which can help you ensure that your planning process is effective. This section uses this approach to suggest useful basic steps for planning and to provide advice on how to achieve each step effectively. The previous section should also help you adapt the basic planning steps to different kinds of planning (developing organisational strategy, programme plans or project plans).

More detailed advice on all steps is available if you click on the overall heading. You can also access advice on any specific step by clicking on the heading for that step. If the approach or some of the terms used are not clear, you might need to go back and look at some of the detailed guidelines linked to the approach explained in Section 3 above.

The basic planning steps

The following are the basic steps that are useful in almost any kind of planning process. This process should be used as part of the cycle of planning that enables ongoing learning and improvement. (See how to use the planning cycle for ongoing learning and improvement above.)

Each step is explained in more detail below.

click on the heading of this section to get the complete guide for how to use the basic planning steps. This is based on the approach outlined in the previous section. If you only want further advice on a particular step, ideas on how to tackle each of the steps are available if you click on the heading for each of the steps.

These steps can be adapted to use for specific planning purposes. Your decision about what kind of planning process you need will tell you how much time you must set aside, who should be involved, how and at what point. (See the guidelines on how to plan strategically for some ideas on different kinds of planning.)

Step 1 - Preparing to plan – ensuring commitment

It is important to prepare well for any planning process. As we noted in the detailed guidelines on the approach to planning in the section above, planning should not be seen as something you do before you start on the real work, but as part of " the real work" itself. It takes up time, energy and other resources. It plays a crucial role in laying the basis for effective ongoing thinking, action and achievement. We also noted that involvement and participation are of vital importance to effective planning processes. We need to prepare effectively for planning to ensure we get the kind of involvement and participation we need. We must actively build commitment to the planning process so that people are willing to give the time, energy and resources necessary for effective planning. One of the mistakes many non-profit organisations make is to underestimate the amount of time and commitment necessary for effective planning. This commitment will need to come from staff and all other stakeholders whose participation we decide is necessary to enable successful implementation and results.

• The kinds of issues you need to discuss and decide here are:
• What kind of planning do we need to do?
• How much time should we give to each step?
• How much time and other resources will we need for the whole planning process?
• Do we need more information on past experience, achievements or the situation we are hoping to influence before we start the planning and, if so, who will get it, how will they get it, where and from whom?
• Who are our key stakeholders (don’t forget the staff of your own organisation)?
• How important is their involvement to the successful implementation of our plans? How important is it that each main stakeholder group understands and agrees to the planning decisions?
• How important and/or influential is each main stakeholder group? Whose needs, interests and concerns should be prioritised in the planning process?
• How useful or essential would their involvement be at each step in the planning process?
• What kind of involvement will be adequate for each key stakeholder in each step of the process?
• How will we get the commitment to the planning process we need from each key stakeholder?
• How should each stakeholder be prepared so that they can participate effectively? What information will they need beforehand?
• Do we need a planning committee or group to ensure the process runs smoothly?
• When will the planning begin and what target dates should we set for the completion of each step?
• Who will facilitate each session? Who will keep and circulate a record of our discussions? How soon after each step must the record be circulated?
• What other tasks need to be done, by whom and by when (organising venues, food, transport etc)?
• What other resources will we need (flip charts, overhead projectors, kokis, pens and paper, inputs, presstick, admin support for contacting people and circulating records of discussions etc)?

Once you have made these decisions, built a commitment to participate and prepared everyone who must participate to do so effectively, you are ready to start the actual planning process.

click on the heading for more information and ideas on how to prepare to plan and analyse stakeholder involvement. Also click on Planning and evaluation must be participative (above) for ideas on how to ensure the right amount of involvement in the planning process. Also click on how to plan systematically (above) for ideas and an example of what a systematic plan involves – this will help you understand what is involved in the planning steps and the kinds of issues you will need to consider. Click on how to plan strategically for an explanation of different kinds of planning (organisational strategy, programme and project planning).

Step 2 – Analyse the situation and needs

This step involves collecting and analysing information you will need to decide on a goal and a purpose that is:

• Relevant to your target community;
• Realistic in terms of what is possible and likely to make a difference; and
• The most effective and appropriate contribution given the current situation you want to change.

You will need enough information to enable you to answer the following questions through careful analysis:

• What are the major problems faced by our target community?
• Which of these is the key or central problem or issue?
• What are the causes and effects of this problem?
• Can we realistically hope to make a significant contribution to addressing this problem?
• How does this problem or issue affect our primary stakeholders? How do they see it? What are their concerns and interests in relation to the problem or issue?
• Do key stakeholders stand to gain or lose from our taking up this problem or issue? How does this affect our work and planning?
• What experience have we had so far that is relevant to this problem or issue and what can we learn from it?
• What can our organisation realistically expect to achieve? What resources and capacity are available to us inside and outside our organisation? What does this mean for our planning?

This step in the planning process lays the basis for the rest of the planning process. The process of building a deeper understanding of the problem, the situation, and your organisation is important for both the staff of your organisation and your target community. It lays the basis for shared understanding, more effective decisions and a commitment to strategic action. You will draw on the thinking done at this step as the basis for your decisions in all the later steps.

In the next steps, you will make important decisions when you choose:

1. Your goal – a clear statement of the long term change you would like to see. This is usually not something you can achieve alone, but is an important change that will improve the lives of your target community. This is the long-term goal your organisation decides it must contribute to bringing about. Clarifying this broad goal helps to keep the rest of your planning focused on what will make a real contribution to change, even if it is only a part of a bigger and longer-term change.
   
2. Your purpose – your organisation’s contribution to the goal – this should be a clear statement of what your organisation commits itself to achieve. This must be something that will make an important contribution to the achievement of the goal. But, it must also be something your organisation can realistically achieve on its own.
   
3. Your objectives – specific statements of what has to be achieved [results] by your organisation to reach the organisation’s purpose.
   
4. Your activities – clear decisions about who will do what and by when in order to achieve each objective.

Each of these decisions builds on your earlier decisions, but all of them depend on how well you have done the analysis. The analysis helps you ensure that your goal, purpose, objectives and activities are relevant, useful and realistic.

The next step is to decide on a goal and purpose that is relevant to the needs of your target group but also realistic in the context. The needs analysis will assist you to ensure that this decision about the future situation you wish to bring about is based on a deeper understanding of the problem and its causes and effects.

click on the heading for more information and ideas on how to analyse the situation and needs. This includes advice on what a target community is; how to collect relevant and reliable information; analyse problems; analyse stakeholders in relation to the problem; and analyse your organisation.

Step 3 – Prioritise and select the Goal and Purpose

Deciding on a goal is important because this tells you what change in people’s lives you hope to contribute to bringing about. A goal is a clear statement of the future situation you would like to come about. Goals are usually longer-term aims that your organisation cannot hope to bring about alone but will make a significant contribution to helping bring about. They tell us why we do what we do. Goals are also the final basis on which you evaluate what you have achieved. When you are developing a strategy for your organisation, this is a very important strategic decision. It is the vision of what you would like to see that will guide everything else you do. All further programme or project planning must be relevant to helping bring this about.

Once we know what your goal is, you need to decide on the purpose of your organisation – why do we exist and what contribution will we make to achieving the goal? The purpose is a clear and concrete statement of what you undertake to achieve. The purpose should be something you can realistically achieve as a result of your work. Agreeing a purpose is making a clear commitment to achieving this result.

[If you are developing an organisational strategy, the purpose explains why your organisation exists, its mission. In programme or project plans, the purpose must state what that programme or project will achieve. This should be based on the overall strategic goal and purpose of the organisation as a whole as agreed in the organisation’s strategy.]

In this step you will use your needs analysis to decide:

• What is the future situation you will contribute to bringing about? What is the most relevant goal? What is the most clear and concrete way of stating this goal?
  
• What you can achieve (as an organisation, programme or project) that will make the most significant and useful contribution to achieving the goal you have agreed on? What is the most relevant but also most realistic purpose (for our organisation, programme or project)?
  
• What external conditions will need to exist for you to achieve your goal and purpose? How important are these to your success. Can you influence them, and if so how (you will need to include this in your later planning)? If they are important, unlikely to come about but you can’t influence them, does this mean the goal and purpose are unrealistic?

It is important to remember that you are making choices when you decide on a goal and purpose. These choices need to be strategic (carefully selected from the alternatives as the most useful) as they will affect all of your further planning. They also need to be as clear as possible so that they are a record of agreement that can guide your further decisions and actions and be used as a basis for assessing what you are achieving. In the next step you will be deciding on clear specific objectives that will enable you to achieve your goal.

click the heading for more information and advice on how to choose and write a clear goal and purpose. If you need more information on the difference between a goal and a purpose, the meaning of external conditions or on the planning framework we are using, click on the heading Planning must be systematic above. If you need more information on the difference between organisational strategy, programme and project plans and how you can link them, click on Planning must be strategic above.

Step 4 – Develop Clear Specific Objectives

Objectives are concrete results you need to achieve in order to reach the purpose. Objectives should be as clear and specific as possible. They should state the result you aim to achieve, not what you will do to achieve it. This helps you to focus on what the effect of your work should be, not only on your activities. It also allows you to evaluate what was achieved in terms of changes in the real world, not just what you did. Objectives should be more specific and concrete than your purpose and should be relevant to achieving your purpose.

In this step you will use your needs analysis and your agreed goal and purpose to decide:

• What specific results are needed to achieve your purpose? The needs analysis included an analysis of the causes and effects of the problem – do the causes you identified give you an idea of what must change in order to achieve your purpose? What objectives will we have to achieve to achieve the purpose?
• Is it possible to make your objectives more specific by stating by when they should be achieved, who should benefit, how many or much must be achieved and how well?
• Can you realistically achieve these results? If not, can you improve your capacity to achieve them by, for example, building alliances and improving your organisational capacity? Do you need to set objectives to take account of these things? (If you can’t improve your capacity to achieve the results that are necessary to achieve the purpose, you will need to go back and make the purpose more realistic.)
• What external conditions will need to exist for you to achieve your objectives effectively? How likely are they to happen? Can you do anything to influence the situation so that these conditions exist? (You will need to include these things as either objectives or as part of your plans for implementing your strategy.) If they are important and unlikely to exist, but you can’t influence them, are your objectives realistic?

Once you have clear, specific and agreed objectives, you are ready to begin planning the actions you will take to achieve them. The goal, purpose and objectives are the foundations of this process. You will need to decide on the best strategy for achieving each objective.

click the heading for more information and advice on how to develop clear, specific objectives.

Step 5 – Identify Alternative Strategies and Select the Most Effective Strategy

This step involves trying to find the best way of achieving your objectives. Strategy is the choice we make about the best approach to getting something done. This is a very important step. It enables us to avoid just assuming that there is a right way of getting something done and forces us to look at alternatives that we may not have considered properly before. This is very important if you want to find new and more effective ways of doing things. Just doing things the way you always do them, may not be strategic. You won’t know unless you deliberately think of other options and test them out with open minds. The biggest mistakes and waste in development work are made by organisations that do not keep testing their thinking to come up with better and more relevant strategies.

In this step, you will use the deeper understanding of the problem and stakeholder needs developed in your needs analysis to decide:

• What are the alternative ways you could use to achieve each objective?
• What criteria will you use to assess each strategy (e.g. relevance, realistic etc) in order to choose the most effective and realistic alternative?
• Based on these criteria, what is the most effective strategy for achieving each objective?
• What external conditions will need to exist for you to effectively implement each strategy? How important are they to your strategy succeeding? How likely are they to happen? Can you do anything to influence the situation so that these conditions exist? (You will need to include these things as part of your strategy.) If they are important and unlikely to exist, but you can’t influence them, is your strategy realistic?
• What resources will be needed? Is this realistic?

Once you have agreed realistic and effective strategies for achieving each of your objectives, you are ready to start planning to implement them by developing activity plans.

click on the heading for more information and advice on how to identify and alternative strategies and select the most effective strategy for achieving your objectives.

Step 6 – Plan implementation

This step involves detailed planning about how you will implement the strategies you have decided on.

You will use the decisions about the most effective strategy to achieve each objective to decide:

• What major activities will be needed to implement each strategy?
• Who will be responsible?
• By when should activities by completed? What deadlines should be set?
• What specific resources will be needed for the activities required to achieve each strategy?

You are now ready to finalise your plan by planning for evaluation. The plans you make in the next step about when you will evaluate, who will be involved and how you will collect the information you need, should then be added to the implementation plan you have just drawn up as part of the activities.

click on the heading for more information and advice on how to plan for implementation. This includes a form you can use to summarise your implementation plans.

Step 7 – Plan for evaluation

This step involves planning how you will evaluate your progress and what has been successfully achieved. This needs to be done at the planning stage so that it can guide implementation by ensuring a clear record of agreements about what successful achievement means. It helps to clarify the plans by making sure that everyone understands what you intend to achieve in the same way. It also ensures you have a clear and agreed basis for assessing what was actually achieved and your progress along the way. If you have followed the systematic approach to planning outlined in the earlier section, you will already have a very useful basis for monitoring your progress and evaluating your achievements.

In this step you will use your needs analysis and overall plan to finally decide:

• What criteria or indicators you will use to evaluate progress and achievements in relation to your goal, purpose and specific objectives ;
• When you will monitor progress and evaluate achievements;
• Where and from whom you will get the information you need;
• Who should be involved in monitoring progress and evaluating achievements; and
• How you will collect the information you will need.

Once you have made these decisions, you have completed the planning process. Now, all that is needed is to summarise your plan in a neat, clear, easy-to-use form so that it is a useful record and guide for all those who will play a part in implementing it successfully.

click on the heading for more information on how to plan for evaluation. This includes ideas on how to use criteria and indicators of successful achievement.

Step 8 - Summarise your plan

It is useful to summarise your plan as you go along and to keep circulating it to everyone along with a summary of the discussion after you complete each step. This will mean you have a clear record of your decisions at each step, which you can use in the next step.

If you have done this all the way along and are using the Logical Framework Approach outlined in the section on how to plan systematically, you should have a useful record of your discussions that you can use to:

• Check your thinking and whether it all makes sense;
• Keep a clear record of decisions;
• Guide implementation;
• Monitor external conditions and make adjustments if your assumptions do not prove to be accurate;
• Explain your planning to donors or others whose assistance and support you decide to request;
• Evaluate progress and achievements; and
• Check your previous thinking, when you start the next planning process, and improve it based on the learning you have done in the implementation and evaluation phases.

See the section on how to plan systematically for a summary format you can use to summarise your plans.

Introduction to planning | An approach to planning | Case Study:Example of planning
How to plan - eight planning steps | Facilitating A planning workshop

Planning Index