Outcome Mapping
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Outcome Mapping Practitioner Guide
Preparing to use OM
Before you start to use Outcome Mapping, there are a few things you might need to do, especially determining the acceptance and support of using OM in your organization or for your initiative, the resources that will be required for using OM, and of course, what you want to use OM for (making sure there is a use-focus).
In facilitating the use of OM with different kinds of organizations, practitioners have noticed that the actor-focused perspective resonates most strongl... Read more ▼
Before you start to use Outcome Mapping, there are a few things you might need to do, especially determining the acceptance and support of using OM in your organization or for your initiative, the resources that will be required for using OM, and of course, what you want to use OM for (making sure there is a use-focus).
In facilitating the use of OM with different kinds of organizations, practitioners have noticed that the actor-focused perspective resonates most strongly with people working directly with stakeholders or beneficiaries. it produces a detailed map that is useful to 'field-' or 'front line' staff and often to other stakeholders. Conversely, people further away from 'the action' like those at headquarters with broader policy or funding decision-making responsibilities, are slower to see the value in a detailed, actor-centric approach. The project or program perspective, often a perspective 'from above', dominates in international development funding situations, and this is usually expressed through the use of the logical framework, results chains or impact pathway and theory of change models. the project overview perspective is necessary and useful for certain, higher level audiences and purposes. However, local stakeholder or those with operational, field or front line roles often complain that big picture theory of change models do not speak to their realities, to their management needs, to their concerns. The usual practice is to accept the funder-perspective framework as a necessary imposition, complying with its use at field level to secure or maintain funding. Are these frameworks are truly useful to field personnel, partners or beneficiaries, who need to grapple successfully and resiliently with complex situations they face? OM can be helpful to to bring in an actor-focused model that is readily adaptable to a variety of contexts and uses. It can link the external view and complement it by giving people working directly with stakeholders a framework that clarifies what they do and what is relevant and feasible in the situations they encounter.
What do i need to think of before I want to use Outcome Mapping?
Nuggets related to this section:
How to introduce Outcome Mapping to programmes and teams?
There are many examples of people using OM to adjust conventional program- or project-focused logical frameworks, making them more directly useful to actual field conditions. There are numerous practical ways of adapting OM, with other tools, so that it becomes a tool to reflect, make sense of data, and use.
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Translations and adaptations of the OM terminology?
OM practitioners from around the world have adapted the OM concepts into the local language
Nuggets related to this section:
- Outcome Mapping Glossary in Khmer by Sander Schot
- Translation of common OM terms in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish and Khmer by Steff Deprez