The Evaluator’s Imperative: Understanding whether interventions were actually designed to solve the right problem.
In most development programs, solutions precede problems, and evaluators should not perpetuate this. In international development, we often see well-intentioned projects that achieve all their stated outputs but fail to create lasting, systemic change. We focus intently on evaluating effectiveness and efficiency — Did the project deliver what was promised, and at what cost? —yet we frequently miss the most critical question of all: Was the intervention designed to solve the right problem? The reality is that much of the development sector suffers from a fundamental design flaw: Solutions often precede Problems. Development practitioners often arrive with pre-packaged tools, often due to organizational mandates or donor preference, and then try to fit them to a perceived local issue, bypassing the complex, time-consuming work of deep problem analysis. This process—sometimes described as "organized anarchy" or "Garbage Can Theory" in public policy—creates program...