In this article, we explore experiences and learnings from adapting to challenges encountered in implementing three Developmental Evaluations (DE) in British Columbia, Canada within the evolving context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We situate our DE projects within our approach to the DE life cycle and describe challenges encountered and required adaptations in each phase of the life cycle. Regarding foundational aspects of DEs, we experienced challenges with relationship building, assessing and responding to the context, and ensuring continuous learning. These challenges were related to suboptimal embeddedness of the evaluators within the evaluated projects. We adapted by leveraging online channels to maintain communications and securing stakeholder engagement by assuming non-traditional DE roles based on our knowledge of the context to support project goals. Additional challenges experienced with mapping the rationale and goals of the projects, identifying domains for assessment, collecting data, making sense of the data and intervening were adapted to by facilitating online workshops, collecting data online and through proxy evaluators, while sharing methodological insights within the evaluation team. During evolving crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluators must embrace flexibility, leverage, and apply their knowledge of the evaluation context, lean on their strengths, purposefully reflect and share knowledge to optimise their DEs.
This article uses reflective practice and social interdependence theory to unpack the ways in which our practice as internal evaluators was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, using the development of a monitoring and evaluation framework as a case study. The reflections are separated into six stages: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. Initial reflections on the impact of COVID-19 drew out the negative effects of the pandemic and associated restrictions, which limited our ability to build rapport and stretched our capacity to balance work and home commitments. Deeper investigation revealed that the disaster pushed us to develop new ways of working that will augment and improve our future efforts. We foresee that these learnings will enable a future with greater ability to offer hybrid online/face-to-face collaborative opportunities that will enhance inclusion and active participation, thereby promoting monitoring and evaluation with greater collective ownership and relevance to a wider audience.
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