Project Production: Tools for Identification and Design
Instruments for Project Production
A high degree of systematization in project production with the EML involves two generic types of controls: internal controls directing how work is organized to achieve objectives, and external notices to applicants and participants regarding this work and its results.
This is achieved through the creation of standardized written procedures that explain how the project will develop.
The EML uses two types of instruments: production instruments used in the creation phase (identification, design, and formulation) and dissemination instruments used at stages of completion and follow-up evaluation. An intermediate instrument between both tasks would be beneficial.
Tools for Identification and Design
The workshop on the logical framework is a group meeting between experts and stakeholders in the intervention that is designed jointly.
All manuals emphasize the logical framework and the democratic participation symmetry that the workshop produces. However, we must not be naive. The primary role differentiation is between those who apply the tools and know the goals that lend themselves to them, which produces social decontextualization asymmetries. The logical framework given at the workshop is also important. We cannot believe a priori that the workshop is a place where there are no social relations between actors who live outside of it.
Regarding the methodological problems in the workshop, the question boils down to an initial belief that faces the moment of identification like an intervention phase, when in practice the objective is to know the context to develop a better intervention. This form of knowledge, raised by the EML, is a way to engage participants in action. This is critical because, in practice, participation is greater in the execution phase. To know the position of those involved in the project according to their interests, ability, or vulnerability, a stakeholder analysis designed by the UK is a good tool: first, make a list of actors who will be affected by the project, both primary and minor players.
It discusses the interest and possible effects the project will have on each of the groups, and then re-categorize them in terms of influence and importance. The importance is defined as the priority the organization gives each group involved, once their interests are defined.
Influence is the capacity for autonomy that each group has in relation to participation or completion of activities. Therefore, the most vulnerable groups of beneficiaries are those most important but have less influence on the project. Then, create a double-entry table where players are placed in two dimensions and two values: high and low. The result is a matrix that can provide positions of the actors under 4 categories: beneficiaries, partners, neutrals, and opponents. Potential beneficiaries will be the most vulnerable, and the intervention will continue to improve but be limited to participate. The partners are actors who can assist in the intervention because they have the ability and autonomy to intervene. Neutrals are the actors that have little relevance to the project and cannot influence it, and the opposition are those that have little relevance to the intervention but have a great capacity to influence the project.
The instruments used to formulate the issues are:
Problem Tree: It has its origin in a Japanese engineer who used it to analyze the problems of assembly lines in the Kawasaki factory. It is used to detect problems in the so-called quality circles and to interpret the management and hierarchical relationship between each problem, so the ability to sort and prioritize the action is its true potential.
The launch begins with a brainstorming session where problems in the community or social space will be considered. To do this, participants note the problems on cards, the results are presented to all to be analyzed and formulated in terms of problems, then look for the central problem and identify the causes that provoke it, and conclude that the tree root is the least visible.
The analysis continues with the effects caused by the central problem, which would be the branches of the tree. Visibility problems are caused by their effects on the branches.
Example: center = juvenile delinquency problem