What is likely to go wrong? Failure Festival: What is likely to go wrong? December 9, 2013 Violet Murunga AFIDEP 1 HIV Project Consultative Meeting Draft Presentation 1

Failure is part of programming Donors are interested in learning about what did not work as much as what worked Need a mechanisms for an objective assessment of the situation and discontinuing such activities or approaches (M&E)

Failure can happen because of challenges at various levels Contextual factors e.g. beneficiary attitude and behavior; beneficiary institutional policies Project team capacity at staff, institutional and partnership level

Policy makers may be too busy High level policy makers are inundated with many commitments and competing interests Institutional commitments Competing interventions trying to support or engage them They have to make choices – What’s in it for me (WIFM); competing interests Because of time constraints, they often have very little time to avail themselves therefore the quality of information collected from them may be compromised They have to make choices – What’s in it for me (WIFM) Sometimes based on financial incentives e.g. per diem offered by other programme They may loose interest when they realize you are not a source of funding

Time constraints and technical capacity Staff are not full time on one project; working on various projects Staff may fall behind with meeting targets because of poor time management and therefore project plans and deliverables falls behind schedule Limitations with technical capacity compromises the quality of outputs or delays completion of outputs Partner is not easy to work with and/or there are challenges in getting required deliverables

Mitigating the challenges At beneficiary level (high level policy maker) Flexibility – fit into their schedule or activities Focus – identify information gaps that only they can address; leave out general information you can obtain from other sources; this makes your contact brief but effective Get them to delegate someone who can fill any pending gaps

Mitigating the challenges At Project team level Conduct capacity needs assessment for new project Assign team with appropriate skills – management, coordination and technical Bring in short-term consultants to support work – if feasible Form partnerships with institutions that have complementary strengths; strive for openness and inclusiveness to promote participation and ownership by all partners

Open Discussion What do you think is likely to go wrong in this project? How could we mitigate the potential problems? Lessons?

Thank you!