Programme Design and Management

IPE has developed considerable expertise in designing, managing and implementing development projects and programmes. From standalone small projects to multi-departmental sector reform programmes, we have achieved success in all these areas. To view our projects in this practice area, please click here.

Programme Design

At IPE, we believe that half of the success of a programme is in its design – hence we go through a robust process of situation analysis, diagnostic studies, stakeholder analysis, consultations and then arrive at the contours of the likely programme. The proposed programme interventions, and arrangements are then shared with the stakeholders and based on their feedback, the design is finalised. Our technical experts not only help our clients to clarify their goals and objectives but also analyzing alternative measures to achieve them.

Our areas of work under this design component are:

Feasibility Studies

These are the pre-project design activities and deal with the efficacy of certain interventions in attaining the Goals of the programme. These could be in the form of Pre-Project Technical Assistance (PPTA), Appraisal Missions or standalone studies assessing the feasibility of actions.

Our high quality team ensures that each feasibility study is comprehensive, reliable and robust and aids the client in its decision of going ahead with the proposed project.

Prioritisation and risk analysis

Project design requires gathering, synthesizing, and analyzing information with objectivity and detail to support a programme decision that makes optimum use of resources to achieve desired results. We help our clients through proposing interventions that are ethically sound, technically up-to-date, relevant to the programme setting and acceptable by the intended beneficiaries.

A major area of decision making is in choosing from among competing alternatives in the design process. For this, we rely on standard prioritization processes such as ranking, VED, Paired Comparison and other tools (Refer Box alongside).

We find that these tools are very useful in reaching conclusive decisions on the project design and help to develop good programme designs.We also help our clients in developing Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for infrastructure projects especially in the urban sector. These DPRs are then proposed by the state for funding to the national government.

While designing complex development projects, we ensure than stakeholder consultation is carried out, risk analysis is conducted and results are well documented.

Intervention Prioritising techniques

The purpose of prioritsation is to choose one or more of competing demands in a project. Some of the standard techniques used by us for facilitating this are:

Ranking method : in which all activities are ranked by priority and aggregate scores are used to decide on the important ones.

VED method : where V stands for ‘vital’, E for ‘essential’ and D for ‘desirable’ activities

Payoff versus Time Method : prioritizing the activities which have a high payoff and take short time to do it.

Paired Comparison: in which alternative competing activities are prioritized choosing one of the two and so on.

Covey's Quadrants : which classified activities into 4 quadrants of (i) Important and Urgent (ii) Important but Not Urgent (iii) Not Important but Urgent and (iv) Not Important and Not Urgent

MoSCoW : which stands for classifying activities into ‘Must’, ‘Should’, ‘Could’ and ‘Won’t’ categories.

Policy Support

While developing programmes, we are often required to assist departments in formulating their policy objectives and priorities. This activity involves research, analysis, consultation with stakeholders and synthesis of information to produce recommendations. It also involves an evaluation of options against a set of criteria used to assess each option. A properly framed policy results in development of framework that serves as guide for undertaking activities in achieving the goals envisaged.

For instance in the case of PPP, the spectrum of partnership forms possible (refer Figure below) need to be adequately understood, analysed and finally the best choice made for the client.

Policy Support - Spectrum of PPPs (Adapted from Gidman, 1995)

Programme Management

Even with a well-designed programme, attaining the set objectives/goals may be difficult without effective planning, organizing, and managing resources towards successful implementation of the design. Herein comes the relevance of programme management which is another area where we have been providing technical expertise in order to ensure timely attainment of goals as defined in various programmes across different clients. Some of our areas of support in this have been:

Project Management

Several infrastructure and other projects need constant monitoring for physical and financial progress. We carry out this role by managing progress against the original DPR or programme design and use modern management tools such as Programme Evaluation & Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM) to help our clients reduce delays, eliminate lags and have catch up plans for critical activities.

Our service in the Project Management sphere has been especially appreciated in the various urban infrastructure support services being provided by us to JNNURM in various states.

Untied Technical Assistance

Apart from specific project management support, clients and donors are increasingly preferring to provide ‘untied’ technical assistance i.e. the team will support all activities of the departments which fall within the larger programme objectives.

IPE has been pioneering this model of support, especially in the multi-departmental health sector programmes in various states of India. Our model of ‘Untied’ Technical Assistance is reflected in the following figure:

This model requires us to provide services across the spectrum of department / programme activities including:

Enhancing planning skills : To be able to address the issues and challenges facing the department / sector and have a bottom up participatory process building ownership of the activities.

Supporting policy development : Need for policy support is a crucial area of support for Untied Technical Assistance. We not only anticipate emerging policy support issues, but offer options, alternatives and relative advantages of all suggestions.

Assistance in implementation : We supplement policy support and ensures that actions are implemented on the ground. Our experience shows that handholding is generally needed for successful implementation and without this, the efficacy of decisions remains limited.

Helping to measure impact : At this stage, focus shifts from activities to results. This is the touchstone on which any outcome based plan is measured. This would envisage systems for recording, measuring and evaluating change and its progress on programme indicators.

Feedback and dissemination : The learning from the process should be fed back into the planning cycle again and future plans should build these into the process, as necessary.

General Management Support : Underlying the technical role above is a continuous layer of ongoing management support to build capacity and enhance the client’s ability to manage resources efficiently and effectively.

Our support does not always remain confined to the scope of work as specified in terms of reference. We provide services beyond our scheduled tasks and this has been our Unique Strengthening Proposition (USP).

Procurement of TA

In some projects, as part of the project support and management role, we are also asked to carry out procurement of technical assistance on behalf of the donor / client. We are well conversant with various donor processes and preferences for drawing up Terms of Reference (TOR), selection through open tendering, shortlisting, limited tendering, negotiations and contract management. Following the highest ethical standards and transparency, we are successfully handling several million pounds of procurement resource pool funds on behalf of our clients.

Event Management

As part of our role in technical assistance, we are often called to conduct workshops, seminars and programmes for the client / department. Our organizing capacities have enabled us to provide excellent management support in arranging workshops/seminars on behalf of our clients time and again.

Encouraging convergence

Often the provision of quality sector services requires strong co-ordination between various government departments / agencies. Without proper convergence, several bottlenecks arise which may affect the intended beneficiaries. We help to develop institutional solutions, operational processes and personal relations to build bridges between such departments / agencies so that service is ensured without any hindrance.

Convergence – Our experience in West Bengal

As TAST in West Bengal, we are working on convergence with several departments for health outcomes:

DWCD : Helped the DWCD to draft a State Nutrition Strategy 2007-16. This has been integrated within the DFID supported health programme.

UDD : Helped develop a Draft Urban Health Strategy for the state. This has also been developed into a proposal for proposed World Bank support.

PRDD : On issues of local empowerment, capacity building and planning.

Our experience in West Bengal (Refer Box alongside) shows that pro-active Technical Assistance can actually made a remarkable contribution to enhanced co-ordination between various departments. And that is what we have been trying to do.