Project appraisal
The IMACON methodology allows a comprehensive appraisal of a project proposal: it points out the bottlenecks of the project concept, provides specific recommendations to improve the application before implementation starts, and helps anticipate threats to successful implementation. It also offers a visual comparison tool for proposals when decisions about their support are being made.
A versatile tool
The IMACON project-appraisal tool can be used in a variety of management situations — from self-assessment (checking the quality of a proposal by its own authors) to the strategic monitoring of a project portfolio by a donor or an umbrella organisation.
The toolbox integrates existing international standards for evaluation. On one hand, it assesses the future effectiveness of the project in terms of how goals are set at different levels; on the other, it assesses the quality of the documentation, including the presence of all elements of a project application. Each of the six parameters of the toolbox contains questions for assessing how well the project idea has been thought through against a set of criteria.
Measurement
- each of the six metrics has two or three parameters and two scales;
- an expert rates each parameter on the basis of an analysis of the project documentation;
- a list of questions and recommendations serves as the guideline for rating;
- ratings are given as a range of marks (from–to);
- software is used for the subsequent visualisation of the data.
Six metrics of the intervention system
- situation, general context, problem and stakeholder analysis;
- objectives and impact;
- intervention and resources;
- management and partnerships;
- monitoring and evaluation;
- logic and methodology.
The methodology is described in full in the book IMACON Model: Project Appraisal, Monitoring, Organisational Development (2013), available free of charge in Publications or by the link below.