How can program quality be maintained throughout the program lifecycle?
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Program quality is essential for achieving the intended outcomes and impacts of any program. However, maintaining quality throughout the program lifecycle can be challenging, especially in complex and dynamic contexts. In this article, you will learn about some key principles and practices that can help you ensure program quality from design to evaluation.
Before you start implementing your program, you need to define what quality means for your specific context, objectives, and stakeholders. Quality criteria are the standards and indicators that you will use to measure and improve your program performance and results. They should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), aligned with your theory of change and logic model, and informed by evidence and best practices. You should also involve your program team, partners, beneficiaries, and donors in defining and agreeing on the quality criteria, as they will affect their roles and expectations.
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Eric Wei
Founder & CEO at timelyhero
In my experience at Amazon, it’s critical to setup SMART goal to set the expectation and align with all stakeholders. Setting up an unrealistic goal doesn’t help company grow and would damage the relationship between leadership and employees.
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Joan Chidimma Ihebinike
𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 | Public Health Professional | Digital Marketing Strategist | Digital Consultant | Chat me for a Professional LinkedIn Profile that will make you stand out.
To maintain a program quality throughout the program life cycle requires a defined standard to which all involved in managing the program must comply with. Defined standards and regular audits would help attain consistency in a program's quality from start to finish.
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Sergio Penagos
Health Care Advisor
Time invested in defining quality criteria for your program will be well paid. But first you have to clearly defined the problem to be addressed, and develope the theory of change and logic model. After that you can start defining the quality criteria that would allow you to measure program´s performance.
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Once you have your quality criteria, you need to monitor them regularly throughout the program implementation. Monitoring is the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data and information on your program activities, outputs, outcomes, and risks. It helps you track your progress, identify and address issues, and report on your achievements and challenges. You should establish a monitoring plan that specifies what, how, when, and who will monitor your program quality, and use a variety of methods and sources, such as surveys, interviews, observations, and documents. You should also review and update your monitoring plan as needed, based on changes in your program or context.
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Eric Wei
Founder & CEO at timelyhero
Once a goal is setup for midterm or annual, always make sure to setup the relevant metrics and monitor the progress. This way no one gets surprised at the end of the project and you will get a chance to fix the problem and bring it back on track.
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Alejandro Giron Graciano
🌟 Master en Project Management | 💼 Especialista en Gerencia de Agronegocios | 🚜 Ingeniero Agropecuario
As a program manager, I have learned that quality assurance is a dynamic process. It begins with defining clear quality criteria. Periodic evaluation, like regular health exams, involves gathering data, measuring progress, and solving problems. It's like following a guide, using various tools like questionnaires and observations. Flexibility is essential, so you adapt as the program or context evolves.
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Sergio Penagos
Health Care Advisor
You have to define a process for implementing corrective measures for deviations from the program´s plan. Monitoring quality is important, but it is a mean to address issues and ensure program´s outputs and outcomes.
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In addition to monitoring, you should also evaluate your program quality periodically. Evaluation is the systematic and objective assessment of your program design, implementation, and results. It helps you measure your impact, learn from your successes and failures, and provide accountability and feedback to your stakeholders. You should conduct evaluations at different stages of your program lifecycle, such as baseline, mid-term, end-line, and post-program. You should also use a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and indicators, and involve external evaluators and stakeholders in the evaluation process.
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Eric Wei
Founder & CEO at timelyhero
The best practice is to setup regular meeting at a time where all must-attend and sponsored leaders can make it. This way the awareness and visibility of the program can always stay on top of the mind.
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Jumana Yousef
MEL Lead | Driving Impact for USAID Activities in Economic, Education, Health, Telecommunication, Women, and Youth Sectors
Regularly assessing quality in a project aims to verify that the project is in accordance with the specified quality standards and objectives.
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Dr. Mohsin Shaikh
Professor of Management, PhD Guide. Programme Head - MBA ( Innovation & Entrepreneurship)
When we want to maintain the quality of any program we need to ensure that the pedagoy used to delivery the programme is decided taking into consideration the learning style and background of the participants.
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Monitoring and evaluation are not enough to maintain program quality. You also need to use the data and information you gather to adapt your program accordingly. Adaptation is the process of making changes to your program design, activities, or strategies based on the evidence and feedback you receive. It helps you respond to emerging needs, opportunities, and challenges, and improve your program relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. You should foster a culture of learning and innovation in your program team and partners, and use tools such as after-action reviews, reflection sessions, and feedback loops to facilitate adaptation.
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Eric Wei
Founder & CEO at timelyhero
Data speaks for everything. Call out the facts and create data-driven action items for project members to get numbers back on track.
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Sergio Penagos
Health Care Advisor
The process of learning and adapting during program implementation is based on a continuous process of problem solving and change management. I find useful the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle to promote learning and adaptation through a series of iterations.
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Onyinye Daniella Nwachukwu
Partnerships Manager | Experience Designer | Program Manager | Nation Builder
Always be ready and open to iteration/adaptation. Understand your data (from different sources, e.g. feedback) and iterate. You do not have to make a huge change, you can start with controlled experiments. You learn a whole lot more this way, and most times, you get better results. At the end of the day, a project with beneficiaries (stakeholders, clients, etc) is just like a business with customers and the customer is KING.
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Finally, you need to communicate your program quality effectively to your internal and external stakeholders. Communication is the process of sharing and exchanging information, knowledge, and stories about your program quality. It helps you build trust, engagement, and support among your stakeholders, and showcase your program value and impact. You should develop a communication plan that outlines your objectives, audiences, messages, channels, and resources for communicating your program quality. You should also use clear, concise, and compelling language and visuals, and tailor your communication to the needs and preferences of your different stakeholders.
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Eric Wei
Founder & CEO at timelyhero
Setup the communication channel for interval and external stakeholders. If you are running global team, it’s important to pay attention to the timing differences to make sure the right people showing up at the right time. You won’t want to catchup separately for the ones who always miss the meeting and ask for updates.
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Rocio Villaseñor Salinas
Asesor de proyectos en materia turística.
Written agreements always help maintain commitments, complemented by easy-access channels and simple material of reference, such as infographics or short videos.
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Pamatheesan Kopalapillai
Humanitarian Director at Save the Children International
There are many aspects to ensure program quality, but the following are essential; Ensure project implementation plans with IPTT, MEAL plans, etc. Ensure proper communication channels and mechanisms in the project implementation. Ensure adequate funding and usage of maximum resources effectively and efficiently. Ensure timely Emergency Response reviews and implement the recommended actions to ensure the changes are appropriately accommodated. Ensure the use of globally accepted standards in emergency response. i.e., CHS, HAP, SPHERE, INEE, CPiE, and Emergency Health Standards. For e.g, organizations can embed the CHS throughout our work to measure the qualities we wish to see in our support of children and communities.
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Advitiya Kathuria
Army Officer in transition | Operations | Leadership | Public Policy | Govt Relations | Training | Transition Management | Communication Skills | Author
In my experience, the most critical component of the quality assurance process is/are the person(s) in charge of the process. Quality assurance requires the person to be inherently motivated and focussed towards relentless, repeated and rigorous quality evaluations. Every component of the process gets compromised in case the right person is not in charge of the process. The selection, training and constant evaluation of the person in charge, thus, acquires equitable importance in this process.
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Thu Thu San
Former Program Coordinator at Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD)
To maintain the program quality throughout project cycle, all perspectives should be harmonized timely such as planning the project, implementing the project, knowing the result and it's challenges and problem solving with MEAL plan. If one of the above pillar is lack from the cycle, the program quality will be affected.