Ways of working: this is where the approach draws on and shares appropriate management practices & policies that enable the efficient delivery of the NGO’s supports & services
Type of intervention: is where a shared understanding of the beneficiaries requirements allows suitable, sustainable, successful development interventions to be designed and implemented where the challenges of poverty alleviation are similar
The focus of a programmatic planning process is based on a participative engagement with partners & participants, where possible, facilitating a bottom-up approach to planning that maximises reflection, research & discussion – which provides the basis for good decision-making.
Planning is the processes of reflection, research and discussion that allow the organisation to make “good decisions”.
Good decisions are those decision made with the best information available at the time. It is only with hindsight that the organisation can determine if “good decisions” were the right decisions.
Good decisions can be made around resource requirements & optimisation over longer & shorter time periods plus key activities, risks & dependencies that will impact on the progress towards meeting the identified objectives.
Good decisions made at the outset here will allow for good plans to be prepared and these plans will form the basis of project funding (dispersals & accounting), monitoring (progress), evaluation (achieving objectives) and impact (success of projects, programmatic lesson learning, etc.).
Plans are the documented outputs and actions associated with “good decisions”. As a result it is better for an organisation to have good planning (reflection, research & discussion) that achieves “good decisions” than to have Plans based on poor decision-making. It is these good-decisions that build the organisation's & programme's (projects, partners & participants) capacity
Capacity is the optimisation of the three primary resources available to any organisation – Time; Money & Things. Capacity is built through improving the quality of decision-making within the organisation so as to better optimise these three resources towards the achievement of the organisations objectives {Plans})
