Using Easy Outcomes will help you with your project, program, organization, collaboration or sector by:
• Saving time by integrating and building on what you previously did under the headings of strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation, reporting and contracting.
• Letting you communicate better with your stakeholders about where you are going and how you are measuring your success.
• Reassuring you that you have a robust monitoring and evaluation plan which has taken into account all of the major issues and documented your decisions.
• Allowing you to have all of your information just a click away on a dataprojected model whenever you are talking to stakeholders or decision-makers.
Building an Easy Outcomes model helps you:
• work out your outcomes, the steps you need to get there, and to proritize what you're going to do next
• find out what outcomes you are and aren't able to measure and track how well you're doing
• figure out what evaluation questions you want to ask and which you can and can't answer
• decide who should be accountable for what when you're contracting or delegating.
• do this in an accessible visual format using custom made software.
Easy Outcomes is a user-friendly version of a more formal approach (Systematic Outcomes Analysis) which can be implemented on a particular piece of software designed for doing this type of work (DoView).
You're free to use any of the material in this Easy Outcomes site for most commercial or non-commercial purposes as long as you acknowledge this site as the source (see Use page).
We'd like to hear from you about how you're using Easy Outcomes - use our Contacts page to get in touch.
Summary of the 10 Easy Outcomes steps
The Easy Outcomes Analysis has been broken into 10 easy-to-follow steps. The ten steps are set out in more detail on the Steps page. The Easy Outcomes Workbook (PDF) is a comprehensive workbook which will lead you through the process step by step. You are unlikely to have to do all of these steps, for instance when doing evaluation you will just focus on the steps with the word Evaluation written after them.
1. Plan your Easy Outcomes work, identify who is going to be involved in what way in the process. Evaluation.
2a. Build an outcomes logic model of the project, program, organization, sector, collaboration or joint venture. Evaluation.
2b. Check the evidence for the model being an accurate picture of the world. Evaluation.
3a. Identify strategic priorities for your next planning period.
3b. Map current or planned activities onto your model. Use this to work out where there are gaps between what you are doing and your strategic priorities identified above.
4a. Put indicators onto the model. Use this to find out what you are and are not currently able to measure.
4b. Identify indicators attributable to particular players. Ones that everyone will agree have been changed by particular players.
4c. Identify indicator targets and success criteria. These set the levels for making a judgment as to whether an intervention is successful or not. Evaluation.
4d. List any indicator project(s) for improving or developing new indicators.
5a. Put evaluation questions onto the outcomes model. Use this to limit your own, and stakeholders, confusion caused by the same evaluation question being asked using different language. Evaluation.
5b. List evaluation questions going to be answered. Not all evaluation questions will always be answered in every evaluation. You will review this list in the light of Step 5c immediately below. Evaluation.
5c. Assess possible outcome evaluation designs. Identify which (if any) of the seven possible outcome evaluation designs identified in Easy Outcomes are appropriate, feasible and affordable in this instance and document your decision. Evaluation.
5d. List priority evaluation project(s) for answering the priority evaluation questions. Evaluation.
5e. Identify evaluation methods for evaluation projects. Select from the list of evaluation methods used in Easy Outcomes. Evaluation.
6. Identify possible economic evaluation from the list of types of economic evaluation used in Easy Outcomes. Evaluation.
7. Decide on piloting or full roll-out outcome evaluation. Is outcome evaluation going to be attempted on the full roll-out or just in a pilot phase and only best practice application monitored on full roll-out? Evaluation.
8. Identify evaluation management issues which need to be dealt with (e.g. consultation with stakeholders, risk management). Evaluation.
9. Select outcomes-focused contracting arrangements - Easy Outcomes identifies three possible contracting arrangements - contracting for attributable indicators (outputs only); for attributable indicators (outputs) and 'managing for outcomes'; or for not fully controllable outcomes. Select amongst these and use the visualized outcomes model to identify accountabilities in discussions on contracting or delegation.
10. Use your model for reporting back. Use many aspects of the Easy Outcomes model you have built for reporting back to decision-makers and stakeholders (e.g. on progress on indicators, on findings from evaluation questions, in contract reporting). Evaluation.