7 Exploration of the project setting
Before embarking on the detailed design of a project, development actors need to be informed about the issues and local context in which the proposed project will be implemented. Much of the focus will be on research investigation; that is, finding out and information gathering – and this of course complements and expands on the initial processes of boundary setting described earlier.
The wider process of exploration and analysis is very likely to involve direct contact with stakeholders – for example, in interviews or workshops. These meetings are likely to create expectations (positive or negative) regarding a possible future project and contribute to establishing relationships (again positive or negative) among stakeholders. Thus, how the research is carried out will influence both the design of a future project and, inevitably, its outcomes. In this sense, research is already ‘implementation’ since it is part of a process of building relations and thus intervening in the issue or situation under consideration.
Moreover, even as a project is being designed, it is crucial to think about how it will be monitored and evaluated. How will you know that it’s working as you intended? How much impact does there need to be for the intervention to be labelled a ‘success’? Whose viewpoints on the outcomes will count? These are issues that you are going to consider in detail in Weeks 3 and 4 of the course.
You can immediately see that the project cycle, while useful as a conceptual framework, considerably oversimplifies the processes involved in a ‘real-world’ development intervention. In reality, the different stages of the cycle overlap and feed into each other in complex ways. Next week you will look at the next stage in the project cycle which is the design of the intervention.