6 Post-implementation Evaluation

Success! You went through the creative and innovative problem solving process to develop a deep understanding of the problem, identify all possible solutions, evaluate and implement the best possible solution(s)…

Now what?

Post implementation evaluation is just as important as your initial solution evaluation because it can answer a number of questions:

• Did you choose the right criteria?
• Are you realizing the same degree of “success” as you expected to achieve?
• What are the roadblocks and challenges that have come up along the way?
• What new and emerging opportunities have developed since you selected your solution(s)?

Success should be clearly defined with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals, and then evaluated at a number of different levels to answer these questions: Inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impacts, all of which are driven by the SMART goals you set out to achieve by addressing the challenge or problem in the first place.

For example, let’s say a problem you identified was a number of restaurants shut down in response to COVID due to social distancing restrictions. You went through the process and realized that the problem was not a lack of desire or demand for said food, but rather the restaurants could not make enough money without liquor sales. You go through the process of generating all possible solutions to fill this gap (takeout only service, full service with space restrictions, deliver partners, delivery in-house, liquor delivery partnership, creating fiberglass barriers, making chef-appropriate protective equipment, brewing hand sanitizer etc) and make your decision on what’s sustainable and aligned with your goals to get a restaurant or two back in business while creating your own opportunity.

Now how do you evaluate the success of your innovative venture?

We know it is important to set financial goals (like become profitable within two years and have a profit growth of 10% per year), you should also set performance measures at every level of your logic model, which would include input measures, output measures, outcome measures, impact measures (more on these in your readings) to evaluate your overall success and the success of the various components of your (ad)venture.

In this section we are going to consider how to define and evaluate the success of an innovative solution implementation . By the end of this section you will have demonstrated the ability to:

• Reflect on the creative and innovative problem solving process.
• Assess how to evaluate the success of innovation.
• Define success measures for a complex situation.

Read/watch:

• Read Compass for SBC How to Develop a Logic Model.
• Watch Knight, R. Designing a Logic Model.

Assignment:

Assignment 4: Defining Success