Description: Strategy analysis is mentioned twice in this manual. It may be carried out during the district-based orientation and training workshop or as part of the planning exercise following the field appraisal. In either case, strategy analysis is a logical continuation of the objective tree analysis. From the objective trees, those tasked with planning outline the different intervention strategies that will achieve the overall objective. A means-results chain that contributes to achieving the global goal is an intervention strategy. It is very likely that from a single objective tree, various strategies will be derived. Strictly speaking, all these strategies are needed to achieve the overall objective. However, in reality one may have to make choices since budgets, time, and other resources are normally limited. It is therefore important hat the specific objectives and means are clearly specified and then compared.
The purpose of comparing the different strategies is to make a choice of a set of strategies that will help to produce or achieve the purpose of the future intervention. This does not imply that some strategies are less important than others. It rather means that one may have to sequence the implementation of strategies or seek support from other organisations for their implementation. It is also important not to overload communities with too many activities at the same time. It is better to start small and follow a gradual implementation scheme that follows the community’s growth in capacity.
Objective: Strategy analysis is a tool that enables stakeholders to identify the different possible strategies for achieving the global objective and to make a choice of the intervention strategies to be adopted given a set of criteria to be identified by the stakeholders.
With who: The project stakeholders carry out the analysis, with support from the project formulation team. In the case of an Orientation and Training workshop, the workshop participants carry out the exercise.
Examples of key questions:
1. What are the different intervention strategies, i.e. what are the means-results chains that will contribute to achieving the overall goal?
2. What are the criteria that will be applied for evaluation of the various strategies?
3. Are all criteria equally important?
4. Are there any overriding criteria, i.e. a proposed strategy cannot be retained, as it does not fulfil this specific requirement?
5. What is the priority ranking of the different strategies?
How to facilitate:
1. From the objective tree, choose the goals to which several means will contribute.
2. Specify the means-results chains (or interventions) that will contribute to achieving the goals.
3. Identify those means-results chains that relate to general support to be provided by the project to achieve the goals (project interventions). E.g. training of community support staff or community facilitators in a specific subject in order to enable them to carry out village training, training and sensitisation of community members regarding a specific issue, or facilitation of a community action planning process.
4. Identify who has main responsibility for implementing a specific strategy. Ideally, group the interventions according to who holds major responsibility: community interventions, project interventions, government interventions, etc.
5. To allow the stakeholders to make a choice between the intervention strategies that were identified, identify a set of criteria that will help to make a choice.
6. If possible, weigh the various criteria by allowing the stakeholders to score the criteria with marks between one and five. If one criterion has a score of two and another a score of one, then the one with two marks is twice as important as the criterion with one mark. Evaluate the different intervention strategies by asking the stakeholders to score the intervention strategies for the different criteria using marks between one and ten. The higher the score, the better the evaluation. Multiply the score given to a micro-project with the weight of the criteria. E.g., if the weight of the criterion is two, multiply the score with two. Then add up the scores an intervention strategy has received for all the criteria and compare the total score with the other intervention strategies. The intervention strategy with the highest total score has the highest priority.
7. If the method under point six is too difficult to apply, the same method may also be applied without weighing the criteria.
8. Alternatively, one may also opt to choose voting as a selection procedure or pair-wise ranking. With both methods, voting and pair-wise ranking, it is useful to first have a group discussion about what criteria are important to bear in mind.
9. When the pair-wise ranking method is used, only two interventions are compared at a time. When doing so, the intervention that has priority over the other is marked on the matrix. After having compared all interventions, the number of times that an intervention was marked is counted. The intervention with the highest count has the highest priority.
Materials needed: Big paper sheets, markers, objective trees.
