ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies two concerns of development project evaluation that can be addressed more adequately through increased use of workshop methods. These two concerns have been labelled the two loops—the learning loop and the impact loop. The chapter argues that the workshop is an underutilized evaluation tool—workshops are useful both for evaluating the fit between a project and its environment and for improving that fit. Evaluating international development projects is a task that shares all the difficulties of evaluating domestic service delivery programs and also adds some unique problems. The goal of institutional development requires that local institutions be involved in the process of evaluating development efforts and that local knowledge repositories be strengthened. For development projects, the evaluation feedback loop is an integral part of the implementation objective and a partial measure of its achievement. Workshops can play key roles at four points in the evaluation process: Team Preparation, Bidder Information, Field Assessment, and Report Testing.
