Module 1: Result Based
Project Cycle
Management
Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
1 Introduction
From identification of needs to planning, from implementation to monitoring,
from evaluation back to identification of needs again – professional project
management is a cyclical activity. The art of running a project efficiently and
effectively is therefore commonly called “Project Cycle Management” or
PCM. Planning, implementation and monitoring as well as reviews and
evaluations are always based on the intervention logic or results-framework
depicted in the LogFrame Matrix.
This module, the first in a series of six about PCM, introduces professionals
in the field of international cooperation to the background and context of
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1 Introduction
Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
results-based project management. It also provides an overview to planning
in general, to various planning approaches and, eventually, to the PCM
approach itself.
1 Introduction
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
2 Managing for
Development Results
2.1 Background and Context
International cooperation has grown in complexity since the beginning of the
1990s. Its scope has widened, the levels of intervention have changed, and
new modes of cooperation have come to the forefront. At the same time,
widespread unease at the sometimes meagre results of aid and at the
relatively inefficient bilateral and multilateral development cooperation have
led to calls for improvements in aid effectiveness. Aid agencies have been
called on to achieve concrete, measurable and sustainable results. This focus
on results is relevant and legitimate for two reasons. Firstly, it is important
that developing countries realise the extent to which external aid can help
them improve their situation. Secondly, donor countries and their
organisations need to know whether their funds are making lasting changes
in order to learn the lessons necessary for improvement.
A series of international conferences have been held since 2000 with the aim
of converting these calls for greater aid effectiveness into reality. During this
process, the international community of donor and developing countries has
agreed on a number of fundamental commitments:
• The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, adopted by the UN
General Assembly in September 2015, is an official commitment to
achieve 17 goals with 169 targets by the year 2030. In its preamble, the
Heads of State declare: This Agenda is a plan of action for people,
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2 Managing for Development Results
Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in
larger freedom.
We recognize that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions,
including extreme poverty and overcoming inequality, is the greatest
global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable
development.
Poverty Brief Understanding Poverty
Agenda 2030
• Managing for Development Results (MfDR) in projects, programmes
and policies by all actors (i.e. the governments of developing countries,
multi- and bilateral funding agencies, as well as NGOs) was endorsed
and reconfirmed at several conferences and international roundtables
(Monterrey, 2002; Rome, 2003; Marrakech, 2004; Hanoi, 2007; Accra,
2008; Busan 2011). This process induced a paradigm shift from aid
effectiveness to efffective development cooperation reflected in a new
multi-stakeholder architecture – the Global Partnership for Effective
Development Cooperation (GPEDC).
• The 2005 ‘Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness’, in which
developing countries, multilateral organisations and donor countries
agreed on five basic principles for development aid, created a binding
framework and defined a new “international aid architecture”.
Paris Declaration
• Ownership: Partner countries (developing countries) take control of
their development policies and strategies, and coordinate the
development measures.
• Alignment: Donors align their aid with national development
strategies, institutions and procedures.
• Harmonisation: Donor countries coordinate their activities and ensure
that they are transparent and effective.
2.1 Background and Context
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
• Managing for development results (MfDR): Resources are managed
and decision-making processes improved to achieve development
results.
• Mutual accountability: Donors and partners are accountable for
development results.
Actors in international development have been called upon to put the
principles of the Paris Declaration into practice. For project management,
this means that the principles of managing aid for results must be applied
throughout the entire project cycle.
2.2 Key Concepts of Managing for Development
Results
The ‘Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness’ seeks to improve the
effectiveness of development aid at various levels, and commits donor and
recipient countries to:
Development projects are bundles of activities that are oriented towards
achieving an objective. Projects usually intend to solve specific problems or
to improve unsatisfactory situations. Many of them have an innovative
character and nearly all of them contain a capacity-building component.
Management for Development Results means that the delivery of project
services is oriented towards bringing about developmentally relevant
changes. But attributing results to the performance of a specific project is
not always easy. It requires the use of a logical model that defines the causeeffect hypotheses between the inputs and activities of a project on one hand
and the outputs, outcomes and impact on the other hand. As no project is an
island, but is put into practice in a concrete environment, factors other than
the project activities have an influence on the results. The following diagram
illustrates the relationship between planning and implementation as
described in the logic model used by SDC.
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2.2 Key Concepts of Managing for Development Results
Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
Planning starts at the highest level of objectives and it describes step-bystep, by establishing a chain of IF-THEN relationships, how the project
intends to bring about the changes at the different levels and how these
changes contribute to improvements at the goal level. Planning and
implementation of a project can also be understood as an experiential
learning spiral: plan – do – reflect – re-plan – do – reflect.
When we assess a project planning or evaluate the performance of a project,
we typically use the following DAC criteria, which to some extent describe
the relation-ships between the different levels of objectives and between
outputs and activities:
Relevance indicates the extent to which the objectives of a project/
programme are consistent with the beneficiaries’ needs, country needs,
2.2 Key Concepts of Managing for Development Results
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global priorities and partners’ and donors’ priorities: Activities and outputs
vs intended impact.
Efficiency is a measure of how economical resources/inputs (funds,
expertise, time, etc.) are converted into outputs: Activities vs output/
outcome.
Effectiveness indicates the extent to which a project’s objectives were
achieved, taking into account their relative importance: Achieved vs planned
outcomes and outputs.
Sustainability is the continuation of benefits from a development
intervention after major development assistance has been completed.
Impact is the positive and negative long-term changes produced by a
development intervention, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended.
2.3 Components of Managing for Development
Results
The following illustration summarises the key components of MfDR.
Focus on the development goals of partners and partner countries:
The starting point of management for results is a deliberate focus on the
development goals of the partners and partner countries. The frame of
reference is given by targets of national SDGs, national development plans
(PRSP - Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper), sector development policies, etc.
Coherence with the cooperation strategy of donor: The SDC’s
cooperation strategy (country level) and NGO country programmes aim at
‘harmonisation and alignment’ with national and international development
goals and form the frame of reference for the results-oriented management
of individual projects. Humanitarian aid agencies adapt their work in the
fields of prevention, emergency aid, reconstruction and advocacy to the
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2.3 Components of Managing for Development Results
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goals and needs of partner countries and of other actors within the
development community.
Planning for Results
Planning is the process through which goals and objectives of a project are
set, partners identified, inputs figured out, activities specified and
scheduled, and monitoring mechanisms defined, so that the expected outputs
and outcomes might be achieved in a timely manner. (DAC-OECD Glossary of
Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management)
Hierarchy of objectives, logic model: Use of a logic model that presents the
hypothetical causal relations between performance (activities and outputs)
2.3 Components of Managing for Development Results
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
and results at outcome and impact level. This is also called the results chain
or results framework.
Indicators, target values: Setting of objectively verifiable indicators for
outputs, outcomes and impact, and as well as defining measurable target
values and baseline data.
Monitoring and evaluation plan: Defining the tasks, methodologies, deadlines
and responsibilities for monitoring and evaluation.
Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring is a continuous observation function that uses systematic
collection of relevant and selected data to provide management and the main
stakeholders of a project with indicators of the extent of progress and
achievement of objectives as well as the process and impact. Evaluation is
the assessment, as systematic and objective as possible, of an on-going or
completed project, its design, implementation and results. The aim is to
determine the relevance and fulfilment of development objectives, efficiency,
effectiveness, impact and sustainability. Continuous monitoring of
performance and results, periodic evaluation: continuous data collection
using the performance and effect indicators; detailed analysis through
evaluation.
Systematic checking of cause-effect hypotheses: verification of the
hypotheses upon which the logic model is based using appropriate methods.
Assessment of monitoring and evaluation results: analysis of monitoring and
evaluation results; formulation of lessons learnt and recommendations for
the following planning period.
Integration of insights gained from monitoring and evaluation: Lessons
learned, recommendation for future planning.
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2.3 Components of Managing for Development Results
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Results for Learning, Decision-making and Accountability
Results-oriented reporting: Focus on results (outputs and outcomes) without
losing sight of impact hypotheses.
Use of results for steering: How well a project performs can be perceived by
the outcomes it produces and the impact it has. If, for instance, the
monitoring data indicate unsatisfactory performance, steering decisions are
required.
2.4 Core Values and Cross-cutting Issues
Alongside the focus on the achievement of the defined results and effects,
the projects are expected to adopt working processes and communication
patterns that convey certain fundamental values and produce or reinforce
positive secondary effects such as:
• Build up stakeholders’ ownership of the project’s goals through
appropriate forms of participation in all phases of project management
cycle.
• Empower poor and marginalised population groups (beneficiaries) to
participate in development and political decision-making.
Empowerment
Beneficiary Assessment
• Contribute to better governance in the partner country, to gender
mainstreaming as well as to taking better account of the
environment.
Complex competencies like problem solving and participation are best
learned by doing and by modelling. Empowerment is a question of individual
and group learning, often combined with structural changes. Workshops on
gender mainstreaming and environmental awareness will have little effect in
2.4 Core Values and Cross-cutting Issues
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projects that do not allocate resources for gender issues and environmental
concerns.
Capacity development is a part of most projects. With regard to ResultsBased Management this can be done at different levels with specific
purposes:
• Human Resource Development: Train own staff and the staff of
partner organisations to become more effective regarding MfDR.
• Organisational Development: Streamline own strategies and
processes as well as those of partner organisations towards
effectiveness.
• Networks and Cooperation Systems: Encourage partners to learn
from each other and to join forces in order to increase effectiveness.
• Policy Dialogue: Empower partners and their networks to challenge
governments and administrations regarding the effects of their policies
on the poor.
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2.4 Core Values and Cross-cutting Issues
Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
3 Project Cycle Management
for Results
“All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds
of today.”
Chinese proverb
Project Cycle Management is the term that describes the management
activities and decision-making procedures used during the life cycle of a
project. Planning, monitoring and evaluation are means to enhance and
assure that the project will produce the best possible effects or increase
effects. PCM must ensure that:
• The project is relevant in the life of the target group and feasible with
the available resources, the capabilities of the executing partners
(international and national) and the limitation of the project
environment.
• The project matches and supports the programmatic framework of the
partners.
• The roles and competencies inside and outside the project are clearly
defined.
• The project remains on track regarding intended outcomes and impact.
• The project decisions are made based on concrete data or other
comprehensible evidence.
• The established processes and procedures increase transparency and
reduce uncertainty and arbitrariness.
3 Project Cycle Management for Results
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
• The effects and their causes are monitored and assessed systematically.
• The project is likely to be sustainable after project end.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but
not simpler.”
Albert Einstein
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In project cycle management communication is of utmost importance and P.
Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication is especially true: “We cannot not
communicate.” Firstly, many decisions are made jointly, and secondly, to
manage also means to inform others about these decisions – and to make
them happen. Due to the distances involved and in order to assure
traceability, a large part of the communication is in the written form.
In this module, we limit ourselves to the PCM system of SDC at project level.
Correspondingly, at country level the PCM system of SDC consists of the
Cooperation Strategy, the Monitoring of the Country Strategy, the Annual
Reporting and the Evaluation of Country Strategies.
3.1 The two Project Cycles
“Those who plan do better than those who do not plan
even though they rarely stick to their plan.”
Winston Churchill
Most projects have a duration of several years and are implemented in
phases. For practical steering purposes SDC applies two management or
steering cycles:
1. The PCM of the project phase consists of phase planning,
implementation, evaluation and end of phase/completion reporting.
2. The PCM for each project year consists of the yearly planning, the
execution of the planned activities, the monitoring and the reporting.
To make the analogy of managing projects to driving a car, in both, steering
encounters many challenges. We are constantly forced to make decisions and
act accordingly. If you don’t know where to go, you might end up anywhere
(need for planning). If you don’t care where you are going, you might be on
the way to anywhere (need for monitoring). If you don’t check where you are
3.1 The two Project Cycles
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
on arrival, you might find yourself in the middle of nowhere (need for
evaluation).
Many agencies and partner organisations have agreed to apply a system of
key documents for each stage of the two PCM cycles. The following table
provides an overview of documents used by SDC:
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3.1 The two Project Cycles
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Inside these documents PCM defines the following core components for each
stage:
• Management tasks: processes, methods, responsibilities
• Actors and stakeholder: implementing organisation, partners, donors,
target groups
• Guidelines and quality standards: in-house rules and guidelines, as
well as reference documents from international organisations
PCM is organisation-specific. Each organisation defines the core elements of
its PCM system according to its own needs and requirements. Despite all the
differences there is a certain consistency in the way different organisations
in the field of international development organise their project and
programme cycle management.
The international development cooperation increasingly engages in fragile
countries and regions. According to the definition of OECD “a state is fragile
when it is unable or unwilling to perform the functions necessary for poverty
reduction, the promotion of development, protection of the population and
the observance of human rights“. Fragility, poverty and violence thus form a
3.1 The two Project Cycles
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
vicious circle: conflicts often escalate, when state structures are weak and it
is no longer possible to guarantee basic social, economic and legal services
or security.
Fragility has strong implications on Project Cycle Management, because of
the reduced predictability of what is going to happen. This does not mean
that planning should be done with fewer rigors, but calls for thinking in
scenarios and for handling project implementation in a flexible manner. In
fragile contexts an earnest risk assessment is even more important – and of
course a careful risk management during implementation.
Help or Hindurance
3.2 Participatory Approaches to Planning
Development and Change
Change is making or becoming different and as such change is a neutral
term. Development is change in an intended direction – change for the
better. Planning development means, firstly, agreeing on the direction or
even the end point of the change, and secondly, defining actions in order to
make this particular change happen. Therefore, being effective in
development has a twofold meaning: To achieve the intended change for the
better and to be the cause of that change.
Real life is complex and dynamic. It consists of an infinite number of
elements (people, things, structures, etc.) that interact and influence each
other in many ways. Unless we “simplify life” by reducing this complexity, it
is impossible to develop, discuss and agree on ideas about development and
change.
And there is a second difficulty: Planning change means creating and
agreeing on an idea or “mental image” about something that still does not
exist but hopefully will come into being. Agreeing on what the situation looks
like at present, is difficult. Finding a shared vision of the future may be even
more challenging.
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3.2 Participatory Approaches to Planning Development and Change
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“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Most development projects are considered as investments that contribute (at
the minimum) to the solution of a problem. A problem can be defined as the
gap between WHAT IS and WHAT SHOULD BE. Most people start with the
analysis of deficits. However, sometimes a perceived opportunity is the
starting point. Either way, only after having agreed on a description of the
problem at present and what the situation should look like after the
completion of the project are we able to define a strategy for getting there.
In the field of international development, specific methods and approaches
are used. Many of them have been developed for the particular needs of
development cooperation. In this chapter we briefly introduce and discuss
three participatory and results-based or outcome-oriented planning
approaches:
1. Logical Framework Approach
2. Theory of Change
3. Outcome Mapping
3.2 Participatory Approaches to Planning Development and Change
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Module 1: Result Based Project Cycle Management
1. Logical Framework Approach (LFA)
In 1969, USAID first used the Logical Framework Approach in international
development aid. Over the years it has established itself as a standard in
international development circles. The LFA essentially involves the
development of a strategy for interventions based on the principle of a chain
of cause-effect hypothesis: inputs → activities → outputs → outcome →
impact.
“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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3.2 Participatory Approaches to Planning Development and Change
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The construction of the result chain(s) usually starts with agreeing on the
outcomes. In the sense of “reversed engineering”, we discuss the causeeffect relations backwards (or down) to the activities and required inputs. As
we act in complex social systems, assumptions and risks may play a role at
each level. We analyse their influence on each chain link and discuss
possible mitigation strategies. As in other approaches, the intervention logic
is not complete without well-defined performance indicators at each level.
The LFA approach is also used in the public sector as part of results-oriented
public management. As LFA is the standard approach of SDC, module 2 deals
in detail with this planning process.
2. Theory of Change
Theory of Change (TOC) is an approach first developed in the 1980’s by
evaluators who did not only want to measure to what extent intended change
had taken place, but also how change had happened or why it had not
happened as expected. In the 1990, Aspen Institute Roundtable on
Community Change, ActKnowledge, further developed it as a tool for
participatory planning and management of community projects in the USA.
A TOC describes how the partners think that their project will bring about
the desired results. On a “pathway of change” it depicts the causal logic of
the entire project and each particular intervention. In the planning process
they do a “backwards mapping” starting with the agreed upon long-term
goal. In a second step the participants identify the conditions in terms of
outcomes that must be given or created to meet this goal(s). Then they
define the pre-conditions and the pre-pre-conditions etc. in the sense of
cause-effect relationships. Essential elements of the pathway of change are
the assumptions about the change process. Assumptions can be external
factors that must hold true as well as rationale for specific causal links.
When all important assumptions are made explicit, we get a robust “outcome
framework”.
3.2 Participatory Approaches to Planning Development and Change
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TOC uses detailed performance indicators with four components: Population
(who/ what to reach), target (how many), threshold (to what extent) and
timeline (by when).
After finalising the “outcome framework”, which is a graphical
representation of the project, the pathways of change are summarised in full
sentences, showing how, for whom and why the project will make a
difference. The purpose of this so-called “narrative” is to quickly convey the
major elements of the theory of change to others and to demonstrate how it
works as a whole.
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3. Outcome Mapping (OM)
In 2001, the International Development Research Centre, Canada (IDRC)
published its planning approach called ‘Outcome Mapping’ (OM). In OM, it is
very essential to make a clear distinction between the project, the “boundary
partners” who the project supports and directly works with, and the target
group(s). OM focuses on the behaviour of the boundary partners and defines
expected outcomes (“outcome challenges”). These expected outcomes are
defined as behaviour changes of boundary partners resulting from the
services provided by the project (external change agent). These changes in
behaviour in turn lead to changes in the situation of the target groups
(development results).
The external change agent supports the boundary partners through capacity
building measures, networking with strategic partners and provision of
resources. It does this based on a strategy map, which is agreed upon with
boundary partners. This focus on partners makes it easy to clarify the roles,
responsibilities and division of work between the external ‘change agents’
(e.g. donors, development agencies, projects) and the local actors (‘boundary
partners’).
3.2 Participatory Approaches to Planning Development and Change
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3.3 Logical Framework Approach versus Theory of
Change versus Outcome Mapping
The LFA is the standard management tool of SDC for planning, monitoring
and evaluating international development projects. Nevertheless, the
insertion of certain elements of OM and TOC in the planning process is
encouraged. All three approaches have an explicit focus on results and
change and all of them offer all the required elements for the entire project
cycle management. However, some of the underlying principles are based
upon different perceptions of development and social change.
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